By Eric King-
Senior leaders in Trafford council have been slammed by Ofsted inspectors for showing “no awareness of the decline in services”, which were found to be ‘inadequate’.
Ofsted said senior leaders in Trafford council have fallen in standard as they found “widespread deterioration” due to top-level failings. The council deals with lots of young and vulnerable people and require a high level of professional to effectively run its systems. The inadequate finding is a shame to the council which said it would work to address its failings.
Inspectors concluded that senior leaders had “no accurate understanding of the current quality of practice”. A lack of effective oversight at all levels contributed to the council “being unaware of significant weaknesses”, they said. The shameful finding is an embarrassment to the council which was previously believed to be raising its standards of operation.
The council’s previous inspection in 2015 rated it as ‘good’ overall with ‘outstanding’ leadership. Both measures had fallen to ‘inadequate’ in the most recent inspection. Inspectors criticised senior leaders for allowing the decline in quality to occur despite weaknesses being highlighted by “good-quality performance data”.
Despite this evidence being available there had not been “robust action to determine the cause of the figures”, Ofsted added. The report read:
“Reports to leaders consistently state that the majority of practice was good, but this was based on ineffective quality assurance activity, and was therefore inaccurate. This is a failure of senior leaders and managers,” the report said. The deterioration of services was seen for children who needed help and protection, where inspectors found “the service did not have enough capacity, had no practice standards, and insufficient management oversight”.
“Thresholds were not consistently applied, with small numbers of children not offered social worker assessments despite their level of need, and many others not passed appropriately for timely early help. Leaders had no systems in place to monitor practice in the [multi-agency referral and assessment team] and had no knowledge of the shortfalls that existed,” the report said.
Despite the decline in service quality, the workforce in Trafford remained stable, with low rates of turnover and sickness. Social workers had worked in Trafford for a long time, the report found, and morale was “good” despite some issues faced by staff.
“Caseloads remain too high in some teams, with workers struggling to spend enough time with children and young people. Many workers feel supported by managers, but in some teams, gaps or changes in management roles have left them without regular supervision,” the report found.