a)     

The Children, Young People and Families Improvement Plan had been in place since the inspection of the local authority children services in January 2024;

b)     

Progress had been overseen by the Plymouth Children’s Improvement Board and put in place as part of the statutory intervention following the focus visit in December 2022. The improvements noted by Plymouth’s improvement partner and the DfE, the intervention was lifted earlier in the year;

c)     

The Council and its partners agreed to the continuation of a Board, to meet in order to ensure that progress continued to be made in key areas, in particular the Out of Hours service, the local authority designated officer (LADO) arrangements and the response to unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC). These areas were identified by Ofsted as ‘in need of improvement’ and the remedial work had progressed well so much so that Dorset County Council, Plymouth’s sector-led improvement partner, was able to confirm to the Board in September that good progress was made;

d)     

Improvements at the Front Door were sustained and the refocusing of Plymouth’s targeted help services were seeing positive impacts on more families receiving earlier help;

e)     

There was however more to do in order to further strengthen the Front Door to children’s services, improving the journey of children and families from needing to receiving help;

f)      

There were improved timeliness of the completion of assessments and the workforce development undertaken to ensure that they were all of high quality;

g)     

In addition, maintaining caseloads within an acceptable range was a key part of enabling social workers to complete consistently high quality practice;

h)     

Quality assurance work continued to provide the bedrock of practice improvement;

i)      

The particular challenge faced by the service included the recruitment of experienced social workers.

j)      

The service faced issues of re-referrals where families received support from early help and they were then closed after a period of intervention to earlier help or more universal services. Those families then did not take up that support and their situation deteriorated again which required further intervention. The service was working hard to address this by ensuring professionals from universal services were involved from the very beginning;

k)     

The service was always trying to build capacity in family networks in order to support sustained change over the long term;

l)      

The service was successful in recruiting a permanent LADO;

m)   

There were 18 UASC and it was commented that Plymouth’s numbers were low compared to the formula that was used and it was expected that Plymouth would receive more UASC in the future;

n)     

The values and behaviours framework was in its final draft and was being socialised with managers and staff across the service. It was designed in partnership with staff and work on it began when formulating the services’ three-year plan. The service in Plymouth would have high expectations, high support, high challenge as its philosophy but this framework would provide detail behind what it meant day to day for all staff in children’s services.