The social care consultation: give us your views on this important issue

We want to make sure that Ofsted plays its part in ensuring children and young people in our social care system are happy, safe and able to reach their full potential. Take part by giving us your views: Improving the way Ofsted inspects children’s social care - GOV.UK

Transcript:

Tracey Metcalfe

My name is Tracey Metcalfe and I'm the Assistant Regional Director for Social Care and Regulation in the North East Yorkshire and Humber. We're consulting on reforms to our two main social care inspection frameworks, the Inspection of Local Authority Children's Services or ILACS for short, and the Social Care Inspection Framework, or SCIFF for short. So I'm here today with my colleagues, Dominic Stevens and Matthew Brazier. I'm going to ask colleagues to introduce themselves. Dominic.

Dominic Stevens

Hi. So I'm Dominic Stevens. I'm the programme lead for the ILACS Inspection Framework.

Matthew Brazier

Thanks, Tracy. Yeah, I'm Matthew Brazier and I do a similar job as Dominic, but I'm the programme director for the social care common inspection framework, which I'll explain a little bit more in a minute about what that means.

Tracey Metcalfe

Thanks so much, Matthew. Thanks both for joining me today. So we're consulting on reforms to our two main social care inspection frameworks. So could you both just briefly explain what these two inspection programmes are for and how they work for children? So I'm going to come to you first, Dominic.

Dominic Stevens

Thanks. So the ILACS framework, and as you've said, stands for Inspecting Local Authority Children's Services, is the framework we use when Ofsted acts as the inspectorate for all local authority children's services around the country. And we'll say a little bit more in a minute about what that means and how it might develop a little bit in the future.

Matthew Brazier

Social care common inspection framework, which is a bit of a mouthful, but that's a framework that looks at mainly regulated services. So things like children's homes, fostering services, residential family centres. And I think I probably should say a little bit about what regulated means. In other words, services that must meet certain standards of quality and safety that the organisations that provide these services have to register with Ofsted and follow certain guidelines and procedures.

Tracey Metcalfe

That's really helpful. And I wonder, Matthew, could we explore what's changing and why we're consultants? So, for example, can you tell me a little bit more about the vision for our revised frameworks in the SCIF, for example?

Matthew Brazier

We want our inspections to continue to act as a force for good. We want them to encourage the highest quality of practice and provision to ensure the best outcomes for children and their families. We've been working a lot with the government. We're ensuring that our frameworks reflect the reform agenda and to make sure that they align with changes to statutory guidance. We want to strengthen the way that ILACS and SCIFF talks to each other, to encourage providers and commissioners to work together, for example, to secure the right homes for children in the right places and ensure they meet the needs of all children, including especially those with complex lives. And to do this, we'll make the best use of our insights promptly and effectively, and we really need to reflect the shared responsibilities that local authorities and providers have for, after all, are the same children. And enduring relationships with the heart of inspection. And finally, and most importantly, we want to make sure we do all we can to hear the voices of children and their families, to help them participate in inspections. We really want to improve the way we feedback our findings to children and families. We've made some specific proposals in this consultation, but we also have set out an ambition for both the frameworks, what we want our inspections to do. One is that we want to make sure that there are different inspection frameworks talk to each other, that we make the best use of our evidence.

But perhaps most importantly, we want to make children's enduring relationships a central focus of both ILACS and SCIF. We want to make sure that children's connections and how that they're helped by services are really one of the most important questions that an inspector can ask. not just for children's relationships now, but also for their future as they approach adulthood. So that will be a real central part. Relationships have always been an important part of our inspection frameworks, but we want to make it front and centre.

Tracey Metcalfe

Yeah, so what you're talking about is putting children and young people and families right at the centre of our work across both frameworks.

Matthew Brazier

Another thing that we're we set out in the framework that we really want our inspections to encourage providers that are able to meet the needs of children with the most complex lives. We've been worried, not only us, I think everybody who works with children and families have been worried that some of the most vulnerable children are the most likely to experience instability. And we want to make sure that inspections really promote the work that helps those children. Because if we get it right, for the most disadvantaged the likelihood is that we'll get it right for all children.

Tracey Metcalfe

I just wonder if we could build on that and kind of briefly outline some of the key changes then we're proposing in the SCIF to do some of those things you're talking about.

Matthew Brazier

In the SCIF, not only do we want to make it clearer that we'll be taking a closer look at how relationships are promoted, we're proposing to have a separate outcome evaluation area on enduring relationships. So that's new. We're keeping the other evaluation areas that we have already. We're going to keep leadership and the impact on the impact of leaders. We're going to keep looking at making a judgment on the safety of children, but we want to add a new one on enduring relationships. That aligns with the government's ambition, and I think it aligns with the sector's view that this is the enduring relationship is so critical for children. So we hope that will be supported by the sector, but we're really interested in the views from everybody who answers the consultation about how we do that to make sure we're looking at the right things when we look at enduring relationships.

Tracey Metcalfe

Yeah, can I just take you, Matthew, for a moment to think about the focus on fostering? Because that is obviously something that we are going to be focusing on in the new framework. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Matthew Brazier

We're proposing to add an evaluation area on support to foster carers for inspections of independent fostering agencies. Again, everybody listening to this podcast will know that there's a real challenge to recruit enough foster carers for children. And it's really important that local authorities are able to recruit the right number and agents and fostering agencies are able to recruit the right number with the right skills and experience and that they're properly supported and that they stay in fostering. So we're going to look closely about how well agencies recruit foster carers and how well they support them. We hope that one of the changes that we're proposing for SCIFF is how we link more closely to ILACS and how those two frameworks talk to each other.

Tracey Metcalfe

Well, that brings us really nicely on to Dominic, actually.

Dominic Stevens

I mean, I think, first of all, I want to echo everything that Matthew has just said. And it's important as we go forward that we really further strengthen the synergy between the two frameworks and how they work together, and indeed with Ofsted's other frameworks. I think I'd also want to start, if it doesn't seem a little bit back to front, with the things that aren't going to change. I think it's really important to say that whatever changes we aspire to make, at their heart, these frameworks are absolutely focused on whether or not children's needs are being met. how well they're being safeguarded, how well they're being helped to keep in touch with people who matter to them. And those things absolutely continue through. And the desire here really is to reflect developing practice, reflect the changes that the DFE are ushering in, you know, and to strengthen even further how we inspect and the extent to which they actually act as a driver and they provide learning for the sector to improve improved services for children, which is the bottom line. So in terms of the specific changes, the DFE are already consulting on changes that would enable Ofsted to look more closely at how local authorities support families at an earlier stage, and in particular targeted early help and how they support families to stay together.

We propose to amend our inspection frameworks so that they're much more focused on this, and we're able to target our inspection time on looking at those services at a much earlier stage of intervention for children and their families. We want to make sure that all the judgments really do three things and these echo some of the things that Matthew was just touching on. It's about looking at how effectively local authorities engage children, families and their carers in being central to decision decision making about their lives and indeed to shape the services they receive going forward. It's also about how they help those children to create and maintain enduring relationships with families, friends and professionals who are important to them. And finally, how effectively the local authority works with other agencies to meet children's and families needs. Because as we go forward with this, early help in particular is a real multi-agency area. Other changes that the government are bringing forward involve the creation of multi-agency child protection teams that are already being piloted in a number of areas. So it's important that our frameworks keep pace with and match those changes. We're also consulting on measures to tackle the use of illegal unregistered children's homes.

Finally, I suppose I'd just like to say that we're looking at the time scales between inspections, because it's important that we get the balance right between inspection, oversight and providing learning on services to local authorities, but also on giving those same local authorities the space and time to improve. So the inspection burden isn't too heavy on them. So it's about being proportionate and getting it right. And of course, that's going to be part of our consultation.

Tracey Metcalfe

Thank you, Dominic. And I know we're also exploring other changes that will affect both the frameworks. Matthew, I just wonder, could you tell me a bit more about the proposed five point scale and what impact we think this will have for children?

Matthew Brazier

The children, young people and families whose experiences we look at are obviously not just helped by children's social care, you know, they'll attend nurseries, schools and colleges. And we think it's more helpful for children, parents, the wider general public, if we use the same scale for all our inspections. It'll also help us to link our judgments more closely to government expectations. And hopefully it will make it much clearer whether a local authority or a provider is meeting or exceeding or surpassing these expectations.

Tracey Metcalfe

Thanks, Matthew. That's really helpful. And Dominic, we're also exploring how we can improve the way we report on our inspections. Could you tell me a bit about proposals for report cards, for example?

Dominic Stevens

Yeah, certainly. And it sort of links to the last point that Matthew was making as well. And it's about creating greater consistency across all of the areas that Ofsted inspects and regulates, you know, whether it's nurseries, whether it's schools, local authority children's services or children's homes. So it's easy for professionals and particularly for families, for children to be able to look at a more consistent product. And I mean, I think at the moment we publish our reports as documents on our website, which is fine, but, you know, we think we can do better. So we propose to move to, you know, online report cards. that provide an accessible summary of the grades we've given and a drop down section that then gives more of the detail and it will allow readers to go to the specific section of the report they want more more easily as well as indeed to read to read the whole as they would at the moment. The report card includes key facts and figures to help readers to understand the context of our findings. You know, and this may be about the demography, the makeup of the local authority, but also some of the key performance figures which, you know, the Department for Education, Ofsted, you know, the public at large are interested in. So naturally we'll be consulting on what are the right facts and figures, the right data to put in as part of our consultation.

Tracey Metcalfe

Thanks, Dominic. And talking about that consultation, who do we want to hear from as part of our consultation?

Dominic Stevens

Everybody is the short answer. I mean, naturally, we will want to hear from large organisations that represent the sectors we inspect and regulate, you know, whether that's local authority children's services, children's homes, residential special schools. We want to hear from all of the large charities or bodies that have an involvement in this. We want to hear from our own staff within Ofsted. Naturally, we'll be speaking to them too, from a social worker sitting at a desk who has a bright idea. But, you know, most importantly, we want to hear from children, young people and their families. You know, we expect local authorities to listen to children, young people and families and use that to shape their services. It's absolutely right that Ofsted does exactly the same when we embark on a significant change to how we inspect and regulate.

Tracey Metcalfe

Yeah. And Matthew, how important is it that we hear from as many people as Dominic's describing?

Matthew Brazier

Well, we want what we do not just be based on what Ofsted thinks. We want it to be based on what everybody across the sector, including children, young people and family think. We want it to be a consensus. We won't always get agreement with everybody, but it is a genuine consultation. We really do want to know. We haven't made decisions about these proposals. We have some ideas, but we're generally interested in what people have to say and, you know, we'll adapt what we do as we hear people's responses. It'll help shape our testing of what we do as well, because before we actually reach a decision, we'll try out some of these proposals in either as an inspection or just test some elements of the proposals to make sure they work. We really need to make, if we, whatever we do decide upon, we've got to make sure that it will work for children and families. So they will think really carefully, listen to everybody really carefully about what they're telling us to make sure that we come to the right decisions.

Tracey Metcalfe

Yeah, that's really important. And Matthew, what will we do with the responses that you're talking about? You know, how does what people tell us feed into policy and development?

Matthew Brazier

We'll know who's replying because we'll ask people on what basis they're replying. You know, are they child in care, for example? Are they replying on the basis from an organisation? So we understand some of the context. It'll help us to identify themes. And at the end of the day, we're going to have to make a decision about what to do. But we will reply properly. We'll set out a formal response to this. We'll publish a report in due course, saying what we've explaining, what we've heard, what we're going to do and why we're doing it. And not everybody will be agreeing with us with what we're suggesting, but we need to explain carefully about why we might not be doing certain things, but why we're going down this particular road.

Tracey Metcalfe

And I guess, Dominic, listening to what Matthew's saying, how are you going to weigh up the different suggestions and the stories of children, young people's families experiences? How are you going to weigh up those different suggestions?

Dominic Stevens

The way that we've structured the questions will enable us to group them into specific areas. So some of it might be not that we're weighing one particular suggestion against another suggestion, but we've got lots of suggestions from individuals and different bodies. And in many of them, there's a common theme, issue or suggestion emerging. Naturally, we'll want responses from, you know, large organisations that may represent many hundreds or thousands of people. They may come up with some really good suggestions or comments. But there might be that one social worker at a desk somewhere who comes up with a really great idea, or one child or parent who comes up with a really great idea. So actually ideas can be of equal merit wherever they come from.

Tracey Metcalfe

And those experiences are vital to help us shape our thinking and to get this right, make sure we get it right for children and young people and their families. Well can I thank you both very much for your contributions. I think the message is that we can only make a difference to children's lives if we all work together and it's really important the message today about everyone getting involved in that consultation. The consultation is now live. you have until the 28th of September to fill it in. Look on Gov.UK or search Ofsted Social Care Consultation. We'll consider every response. We will publish our response in early 2027 and the revised framework will be published in February 2027.