By Charlotte Webster-
Wakefield’s Children Services has been blasted by regulator Ofsted for making slow progress in addressing their inadequacies , according to a recent Ofsted report.
The regulator criticised Wakefied Children’s Services for missing crucial opportunities, and failing to challenge poor practises in their system. Inspectors said they saw “missed opportunities” in addressing children’s needs. The report adds shame to Wakefield Council who should by now have addressed their serious shortcomings robustly by now.
Wakesfield City Council had been condemned by Ofsted in July 2017 for ”serious and widespread failures’ in all aspects of social care services for children, yet have shown very little signs of improvement two years later.
An Ofsted Inspector told The Eye Of Media.Com that Wakesfield Children’s Services ”has a long way to go to meet the requisite standards for good and adequate provision of services to its children’s care. Our inspections reveal the need for a better co-ordinated system that applies due diligence and efficient reviews and follow ups of its procedures, their implementations, and accountability of its overall workings in children’s services. Its areas of improvement also needs to be applied more consistently across the board of its children’s services”.
Acknowledgement of the failings by the council adds scorn to their exposed incompetence which is without excuse in a field that requires high quality standards and professional expertise. Ofsted’s report said: “The local authority recognises that weaknesses in identifying risk remain, that too many assessments are poor and that child protection investigations are not consistently thorough.
“While some children are receiving better assessments of risk, for too many children this is not the case.”Some investigations fail to fully explore risk because some social workers focus on presenting issues and too often lack professional curiosity in understanding children’s broader needs and risks.”
However, Wakefield Council was praised for securing more manageable workloads for social workers and recruiting extra staff. According to the report, caseloads have been halved from around 40 per social worker last year.
Ofsted also said that the council’s response to allegations against professionals who work with children has “significantly improved”. Workers were also praised for “finding creative ways to engage” with children who go missing from home and that the local authority had stepped up internal scrutiny of the service. A statement from its corporate director for children and young people, Beate Wagner, read: “We are acutely aware of the significant challenges we face and welcome Ofsted’s feedback, which supports our own findings.