(a)

the OFSTED report was received by the Council on 2 January and published on 5 January, and the Council was required to prepare and publish a written statement of the action it intended to take in response to the report within 70 working days of receiving it;

(b)

the OFSTED report’s overall conclusion was that the Council’s services for vulnerable children were now judged as ‘Requiring improvement to be good’;

(c)

OFSTED had found a range of strengths in Plymouth’s services for vulnerable children;

(d)

key areas that the Council needed to improve included –

·         reducing high caseloads carried by social workers;

·         improving management oversight;

·         improving IT systems so that they can deliver accurate and timely data;

·         improving working practices between the Council’s partners;

(e)

the report had recognised that children in the system were safe;

(f)

the Council already had plans in place to address the majority of the areas for improvement highlighted by OFSTED in the report;

(g)

the draft improvement plan included 17 areas which had been highlighted for improvement.  Further investigation was required of the areas in the plan marked ‘tbc’;

(h)

the police, health and youth partners had all been involved in the OFSTED inspection and improvements had been identified for everybody which would require the Council and its partners to work together to achieve the outcomes identified;

(i)

staff had continued the day to day work in the People Directorate whilst the OFSTED inspection had been in progress.

In response to members’ questions it was reported that –

(j)

a great deal of the work handled by Childrens’ Services could be dealt with by outside agencies;

(k)

the ideal caseload for social workers was 18-25, although some had a caseload of between 30 and 35;

(l)

social work vacancies were closely monitored, any vacancies were covered by agency staff only when absolutely necessary.  The Council had a good record of  retaining social workers;

(m)

Childrens’ Social Care contained a high number of experienced managers;

(n)

the Local Safeguarding Childrens’ Board needed to address poor attendance by the police and GPs at their meetings, in addition to taking a more challenging approach;

(o)

the ‘Staying Put’ campaign enabled young people to remain in care after the age of 18;

(p)

Children’s Social Care offered a range of services, and the message needed to be conveyed that there were more services available than that offered by Advice and Assessment;

(q)

discussions were taking place to identify whether the funding required for areas of improvement identified in the improvement plan was to come from existing budgets or whether additional funding needed to be approved.