Trust praised for identifying weaknesses ahead of latest Ofsted monitoring visit

Slough Children’s Services Trust was praised for identifying areas of weakness and taking steps to ‘build on the foundation of good practice’ in the latest Ofsted report. However, inspectors found that children need the pace of change to be improved to increase their life chances.

The third Ofsted monitoring visit, concentrating on child protection and children in need, took place between 14-16 June.

The report said that over 70% of staff in these hubs are now permanent, which was a substantial improvement from the February 2016 full Ofsted inspection, where more than 50% of the staff were temporary. ‘The high turnover of staff, which previously caused disruption and instability for children and their families, is reducing,’ it said.

Inspectors found that leaders within both the Trust and Slough Borough Council had continued to work together co-operatively towards shared goals.

There was praise for the comprehensive and high quality systemic practice training for staff and the introduction of analytical discussions on cases in hub meetings but that practice weaknesses should be more robustly challenged and actions progressed more quickly.

‘We concur with the findings and intend to use the detail underlying them to leverage the pace of improvement,’ said Trust CEO Nicola Clemo.

‘Embedding a different style of sustainable, community-based systemic working does take time and we agree that we need to step up both the pace and the quality of our practice to ensure what we do makes a difference to children and families.’

‘We welcome these visits because they tell us how well we know ourselves and the measure of what we still need to do to keep children safe and make a positive impact on their lives,’ she added.

The full report can be seen on Ofsted’s website: www.ofsted.gov.uk. The direct link (look for 14 July 2017) is: https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/local-authorities/slough