CHILDREN’S services in Barnsley have gone 20 months without having to use any agency social workers and all 14 vacancies for new social workers have been filled, a meeting at the town hall was told this week.
Children’s services in Barnsley were rated as ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted at the last full inspection in 2014, but Mel John-Ross, service director for children’s social care and safeguarding, said improvements had been made, and the team was ‘ready’ for inspection once again.
“Our last full inspection was in 2014. We’re overdue a full inspection, and we hope that we will get that this year, because we’re ready for that, and from that we will get a new judgement,” she told a meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee.”
Ofsted judgements are either outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate, and the current rating for children’s services is requires improvement. But the council has done its own self-evaluation of current performance, as required by Ofsted, which was presented to the inspection body in April.
“We can now see consistently see good practice,” she said. “That’s not to say there are not areas for improvement, but we have gone from being requires improvement, to seeing pockets of good practice, to now being consistently good.”
She said as ‘corporate parents’ of children in care, one of the aims was to try and ensure children in care get the most out of their education, but that looked after children had a greater tendency to miss school than other children.
“We have identified our priorities, and one of them is certainly around children’s education, and specifically the education of looked after children,” she said.
“We have got to be pushy parents. Some of our children do achieve and do very well in terms of our employment, education and training targets. But educational attendance for looked after children has got to be better, and that is a real priority.”
Deborah Mercer, head of children and family social care, said funding for an extra 14 social workers approved in December had already had a big impact on caseload, and the final three vacancies had just been filled.
She also said Barnsley was in a good position in not having to rely on agency social workers, and that Barnsley had now gone 20 months without having to use a single agency social worker across children’s services.
“It has been a major boost to morale and motivation,” she said. “It is making a major difference to the allocation of caseloads, and is giving people more time to do more of the work that really matters.”
She said neglect was one of the biggest risks to children in Barnsley and one of the main reasons children come into care.
In recent months Barnsley’s Neglect Matters campaign has seen 500 professionals who regularly come into contact with children - not just social workers - given training to help identify neglect in its early stages so that families can be supported before significant intervention from social workers is required.
“We’ve trained 500 professionals who work with children and families in understanding neglect and being able to respond effectively on neglect so we can respond as quickly as possible,” said Deborah, “so we can support children and families earlier, rather than picking it up later on in a young person’s life when there can have been really significant consequences.
“We are seeing neglect being much better understood in Barnsley, and we’ve seen a number of useful articles in the Barnsley Chronicle as part of a very successful media campaign around neglect.”
