Correspondence

Ofsted's response to the Stable Homes, Built on Love consultation

Published 6 July 2023

Applies to England

Response to Stable Homes, Built on Love questions

Questions 1 to 6, 11 to 13 and 16 are not applicable to Ofsted’s work.

Question 7: Overall, to what extent do you agree these 6 pillars are the right ones on which to base our reforms for children’s social care?

The 6 pillars for reform provide a good basis for system-wide improvement. They could be further strengthened if they explicitly emphasised the need for a multi-agency and cross-government approach.

We understand the desire to focus attention on family – for most children this is likely to be the place that they flourish, and we fully support this. We think the pillars should recognise the importance of support for families while explicitly reinforcing the principle that the welfare of the child is paramount, as set out in The Children Act 1989 and subsequently - the ‘paramountcy principle’.

Question 8: What more can be done by government, local authorities and service providers to make sure that disabled children and young people can access the right type of help and support?

As the strategy sets out, these reforms are being made at the same time as major changes to the SEND and alternative provision system. A very high proportion of children with social care involvement have SEND, so these need to complement each other. The provider and partnership landscape which supports children open to social care and those with SEND, and indeed for those children who are both, is very fragmented.

In that context, there is a need to strengthen accountabilities and provide great clarity around different partners’ roles and responsibilities for both sets of children, especially in health. A more explicit recognition of the importance of multi-agency working would strengthen the children’s social care strategy for disabled children and their families.

The NHS in its many forms plays a critical role for most disabled children as do schools and other education services, both mainstream and specialist. For many disabled children continuity of care and support between children’s and adult services is very important. The continued disruption to some Health services, and an over reliance on virtual services more widely continues to impact negatively on children.

A family help approach needs to remain alert to the greater vulnerability of disabled children to abuse, so that children are appropriately protected.

Finally, there is an overarching need to use the reform programme to simplify the SEND system. One of the main concerns we hear from parents, carers and the sector is that the SEND system is too complex to navigate. It will be important to make sure that reforms across both programmes align with one another.

Question 9: To what extent are you supportive of the proposal for a system that brings together targeted early help and child in need into a single Family Help Service in local areas?

Neutral.

We welcome a strong focus on evidence-based early intervention and support for families. We agree that families should be involved in the development of services and that services should be evaluated. We also welcome the proposal to base multi-agency family help services in local communities.

While we can see benefits in a system that brings targeted early help and child in need work together, we think there may be unintended consequences.

Firstly, the system may become overwhelmed as more children and families are drawn into the statutory system. The workforce is already stretched and may not have capacity to meet escalating demand and identify families where risk is escalating. Too sharp a divide between Family Help and child protection may have unintended consequences. A system that tends to characterise family help as voluntary and supportive but child protection as compulsory, directive, and stigmatising would not be helpful or just.

Our inspections find that some of the most skilled and complex work to help families and protect children is with children in need (CIN). The distinction between families who need help and those where there is significant risk to children is not easily drawn. Families’ needs and risks to children are dynamic and can change very quickly.

Many children subject to CIN plans have multiple needs, as do their parents, and balancing supportive approaches while keeping a focus on risks can be very challenging. The difference between family support and child protection is often about the degree of risk, not the nature of the support or approach required - so child protection and family support both need to be supportive as well as authoritative. Unknown or unpredicted risks to the child may only be identified during assessment and intervention and move in and out of child protection.

Staff within ‘Family Help’ will therefore need to be skilled and experienced to understand and recognise when risks escalate. This is a core social work skill. Lead professionals who are not qualified social workers are likely to need more support and/or oversight to identify these risks. We know that some local authorities can manage this well, but we have also seen in some poorly performing local authorities that a lack of social work oversight and an emphasis on support can lead to a more adult focussed approach and miss the needs and risks to the child. It would be dangerous if specialist skills and awareness are lost across family help.

The complexity of identifying and working with disguised compliance, an all-too-common feature of families where children are at risk, is a social work skill. We want to avoid the unintended consequence of too many cases escalating into the child protection system, simply to access a social worker and/or because of worry or inability to manage risk.

We have seen strong practice where skilled social workers and family support staff are persistent and creative in building trusting relationships with families. We know that some parents are resistant to support. This can be for a range of reasons including the potential stigma attached to accepting help and/or a lack of understanding of what local services are available. Sometimes resistance to engagement can be part of concealing risk to children, and in other situations ‘disguised compliance’ can mask what is really happening. Sadly, there cannot be an assumption that all families are ready and willing to engage.

Inspection tells us that strong management oversight at an operational and strategic level is crucial. Leaders and managers need to be able to see risk, track progress and test and challenge that interventions are focused on the right things. We have seen particularly effective practice where children in need reviews are chaired independently; providing an objective overview of progress for children and families; an eye to drift and delay and a sharp focus on the needs of the child alongside support for parents and wider family.

We know that in worse performing local authorities, the starting point is often compliance with basic processes and procedures such as regular visiting and reviewing. These checks and balances are most important when partnership working is not strong and local authority performance is poor. It is important that learning from pathfinders and pilots takes account of how weaker authorities make improvements.

We welcome the proposal for the engagement of a wide range of partners in Family Help work, as this is essential if the differing needs of family members are to be met, but there needs to be greater clarity about their responsibilities and accountability. This must include adult services: in particular, but not exclusively, adult mental health and substance misuse services and also domestic abuse support. There are capacity issues across the system that will need to be addressed to deliver the family help model as envisaged. These affect partners and the voluntary sector as well as local authorities.

Basing services locally is likely to help families access them but will be financially challenging in some local authorities if they have to relocate services.

System oversight needs to guard against professionals being too ‘adult focused’ which could lead to present or escalating risk being missed. The proposed increase in families under the children in need umbrella alongside different lead professionals with different disciplines may exacerbate these tensions. Where parents have a wide range of complex needs, or where parents are struggling to recognise and meet their children’s needs, professionals can get drawn in to complex family dynamics. The children’s needs for care and help may become marginalised as parents’ needs take over the focus of professional intervention. We must not lose sight of the child’s welfare and best interests.

There also cannot be an assumption that the needs of the family are aligned. There will be some circumstances where parents and children have competing needs. For example, where parents are blaming the child for their behaviour and failing to recognise that this may result from poor parenting. While the same principles of family engagement apply, as does the need to work with and support parents, there is a need for a child-focused approach of working supportively but authoritatively to help parents recognise and address aspects of poor parenting.

Question 10: What are the top 3 features of early help that make it a supportive service for families.

To create a supportive service, the system needs to have:

• Involvement: involve children and families in the development and delivery of accessible services
• Skilled workforce: a highly skilled multi-disciplinary workforce that is supported and challenged by skilled managers with opportunities for reflective practice and social work challenge
• Capacity: have the capacity to be responsive to the diverse and often complex needs of children and families, focused on what will make the most difference, delivered in a timely manner and able to provide intensive support for families with more complex and entrenched challenges. We know from inspection that stability and continuity of relationships with professionals can be crucial for effective engagement and positive outcomes for children and families

Question 14: In your view, how can we make a success of embedding a “family first” culture?

We fully support involving families in early decision-making. Early family group conferencing or something similar will benefit many children. How individuals define families and wider networks will vary, so the approach needs to be flexible.

Success will depend on having the right checks and balances in place to identify risks such as disguised compliance. Some families may make decisions that place children at further risk. Practice needs to balance being child-centred and being family-focused so that families are helped, and children are protected.

A culture shift needs the right conditions which include:

• strong leadership through the local children’s safeguarding partnership
• investment in family group conferencing
• training, support, challenge and that supports workforce development and recognises the skills needed to manage these meetings
• workforce capacity

Inspections of local authority children’s services (ILACS) can support this culture shift, noting that the ability to make this shift will vary by area. Local authorities lacking capacity and leadership are likely to be focused on ‘getting the basics’ of social work practice right working with the right children at the right levels of risk. Embedding the wider cultural shift without leaving children exposed to too much harm in the community will take time and the capacity for that wider help will need to be established.

Question 15: In your view, what would be the most helpful forms of support that could be provided to a family network, in order to enable them to step in to provide care for a child?

This will need to be responsive to the individual family network situation but in essence it is likely to be around practical and financial support for children’s day to day needs, such as attendance at nursery/school or college or leisure opportunities. There may be more substantial issues such as housing or accessibility or equipment needs. Or there may be more specialist support relevant to the child, such as therapeutic support or counselling or respite care. There may also be relational and mediation work between family members to manage complex family dynamics and support family networks.

There also needs to be a fair approach to birth parents and who with the right support can make the necessary changes for their child to remain.

Question 17: To what extent are you supportive of the working definition of kinship care?

We are somewhat supportive of the working definition.

The opening paragraph is a useful summary, but would benefit from a short explanation that kinship care may be either an informal arrangement made by their parents without the involvement of the local authority or the courts, or a more formal arrangement underpinned by a legal order and/or a child becoming ‘looked after’ under a voluntary arrangement with their parent/s. The rest of the section then serves to add helpful (and necessary) detail.

As it stands, the important distinction between informal and formal arrangements is only clear from reading the extended definition, which is lengthy and technical.

Question 18: Overall, to what extent do you agree that the 6 key missions are the right ones to address the challenges in the system? [see p94-114]

The 6 key missions cover important ground in assessing the success of the strategy. However, in covering the ground, they fail to be truly ambitious for vulnerable children and families. Missions that seek to gather children’s views of relationships and that promise ‘increases’, ‘strengthening’, ‘improvement’ and a commitment to ’work closely’ [with health partners] do not, in our view provide the stretching aspiration for children and families that the strategy elsewhere promises.

The missions also need to take account of the likely changing cohort of children in care if the rest of the strategy achieves its aims, so that the right measures are put in place.

Question 19: To what extent do you agree or disagree that a care-experienced person would want to be able to form a lifelong legal bond with another person?

There is little doubt that it is a critical part of the ‘human condition’ to need reliable bonds with those we love and those who love us. Many of us have critical bonds, friendships and relationships that sustain us at different times and stages of our lives. Care experienced people need this too, particularly as they progress from childhood into adulthood. Many experience early adulthood as more challenging and for longer than their peers.

Whether bonds necessarily have to be ‘life-long’ is in our view open to question. An emphasis on ‘life-long’ may deter some adults, if it sets expectations that they feel unable to offer or are not sure that they will be able to maintain, especially if they do not already know a child well. Whether a bond with a trusted adult requires legal status and/or makes it more reliable is also difficult to say.

What is most important is that those involved in care experienced people’s lives are reliable, trustworthy and authentic and that children can benefit from the bonds such people can offer.

Question 20: What would you see as the advantages or disadvantages of giving legal recognition to a lifelong bond

Please see the response to question 19.

Question 21: What support is needed to set up and make a success of Regional Care Cooperatives?

Regional care co-operatives (RCCs) pose a significant challenge for different local authorities, partners, and elected members – who all have different priorities and needs. The logistics of co-ordinating such a large and disparate group are challenging.

We can see advantages to regional recruitment, but this would not necessarily lead to improved retention, as other factors such as the quality of practice, culture, and levels of support affect this.

RCCs would need to be well-resourced to compete with IFAs – who often have capacity to deliver high profile marketing campaigns, data analysis and business-led models of practice. There is clearly an impact on inspection frameworks to be considered, as the report acknowledges.

We think there are lessons to be learned from the establishment of regional adoption agencies (RAAs), but the impact of these has yet to be evaluated. We are planning a thematic inspection of RAAs later this year and will be pleased to share insights.

Possible unintended consequences of the RCC model must be considered, including the risk that it leads to looked after children living even further from their home areas.

Question 22: Do you have additional suggestions on improving planning, commissioning and boosting the available number of places to live for children in care?

We welcome the intended review of the regulatory system. We have long said that the Care Standards Act is out of date and does not support the services that children need, particularly children with multiple needs including serious mental health or gang involvement.

It is not just about available places- it is about the right homes in the right place that are properly regulated. Ofsted lacks the regulatory powers to tackle saturation of homes in some places. Although additional powers to tackle unregistered homes have been promised, these are yet to materialise.

We welcome the report’s commitment to improving commissioning practice, which has long been identified as inconsistent across the country and not always focused on the issues that most affect children’s lives.

The report’s recommendations about improved use of data are critical too for better planning. This needs to be at local authority, regional and national level. For some children a needs analysis at a local and national level is needed to effectively plan across social care, health and justice.

Too many children are seen as not meeting thresholds for specialist mental health provision and as a consequence remain in inappropriate placements (including unregistered) and often deprived of their liberty. Solutions for these children are likely to require a cross government response.

Question 23: Are there changes you think would be helpful to make to the existing corporate parenting principles?

We agree that the corporate parenting principles should be strengthened, with clear accountability for the local authority as the key decision-maker in the lives of children in care.

In particular, the central importance of promoting supportive, nurturing and lasting relationships should be given greater prominence. (Currently, this is submerged in a broad principle addressing stability.) The principles should also set out the specific asks of agencies who can contribute to improving care leaver outcomes including education, care health and employability. This will vary according to the role of the agency in a child’s life.

Question 24: Which bodies, organisations or sectors do you think should be in scope for the extension of the corporate parenting principles, and why?

A child in care is raised by their wider birth and/or substitute family, both nuclear and extended, neighbours, their school or early years provider, many health practitioners and agencies, on occasion the police or other criminal and family justice organisations, a panoply of voluntary, charitable and religious organisations, and on occasion even with the help of the corner shop proprietor.

Not all agencies should acquire the status of the decision-making ‘corporate parent’. That statutory function rests with their local authority, but there could be clearer expectations on how specific agencies can play their part, appropriately, in providing children in care with the best start in life. For example, greater emphasis could be placed on schools, irrespective of status, to provide places for children in care outside of the standard entry points when this was considered to be the best school for them. We think all public services associated with a child in care should have a degree of corporate parenting responsibility, but these responsibilities need to be clear and proportionate to their role in the child’s life.

Question 25: Do you have any further feedback on the proposals made in the 6 missions of this chapter (Chapter 5, The care experience]

Please see the response to question 18.

Question 26: Overall, to what extent do you agree that the proposals on the social worker workforce address the challenges in the system?

We support the planned reforms to strengthen the children’s social work workforce, but children’s social care services are not delivered only by social workers. It is right to make social work practitioners a key focus, but the wider workforce also needs to be included in Government’s vision.

Perhaps the most important thing that Government could do to support children’s social workers is to genuinely and publicly value the critical role that they play. Government consistently promotes teaching as a desirable profession, and its focus on the NHS during the pandemic was effective in bolstering the confidence of health practitioners and the public. Children’s social workers need this kind of public pride to be instilled in the public consciousness.

The focus on strengths and relationship-based practice is welcome, as is the importance of the workforce being sufficiently representative of the communities it serves.

Our inspection evidence shows that while pay is important to practitioners, it isn’t necessarily the highest priority. Social workers tell inspectors that they really value working for senior leaders who are present, visible and who both understand the risks associated with working with many families and support their staff who must make the decisions on how to work with those risks. Social workers thrive and are readily retained in organisations that provide high challenge and high support in equal measures.

The proposals to separate out child protection expertise within the workforce and have social workers moving between roles, while having some merit (please see earlier comments) could have the unintended impact of harming social worker recruitment and retention.

We support Government’s strategy to tackle the problems associated with agency social work. Local authorities need agency social workers to give a responsive and flexible service, but local authorities must be the lead agency in that partnership.

Question 27: If you want the proposals to go further, what would be your top priority for longer-term reform?

See above.

Question 28: Beyond the proposals, what further help would ensure we have a children’s social care system that continues to share and apply best practice, so that it learns from and improves itself?

Our inspection evidence shows that the local authority children’s services sector, while a very challenged sector in need of some reform, is, for the most part, improving. Over the past 5 years we have seen the number of inadequate local authorities more than halve from 22% to 9%, and the proportion judged good or outstanding rise from 36% to 58%.

Central government has a good record of working with its highest performing local government colleagues to provide leadership to the sector in supporting improvement and disseminating best practice. There is a national shortage of high-quality senior leaders in children’s services. This must be addressed as a priority. There are too many interim senior leaders moving from authority to authority who are not of the quality needed. Investment must be stepped up to recruit, retain and further develop more of the high-quality leadership we see in the best performing local authorities.

Question 29: How can we ensure the delivery of reform is successful?

Any reforms must be sustainable and capable of being replicated in any local authority. It is logical that high performing authorities are trusted to test new ways of working and to act as pathfinders in an environment that pushes the boundaries of statutory guidance and regulation. But testing new approaches only in these authorities does not test how to achieve reform in lower performing places, where partnership arrangements are more fragmented or where there are financial difficulties.

Government needs to find ways of trialling the reforms in lower-performing local authorities. If they are to deliver for vulnerable children and families everywhere, they have to be demonstrably achievable everywhere. In our experience, just because a local authority is judged to require improvement, this does not mean that there aren’t strengths to draw on. Indeed, local authorities on a trajectory of improvement may be even better placed than the highest performers to embrace change and provide a more ‘real world’ environment to test delivery models.

Question 30: Potential impact, whether positive or negative, of the proposed changes on those who share protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

We welcome that the reforms explicitly reference the need to address issues of poverty and ethnic disparities in those who get help. In our experience, local authority leaders are well aware of the impact of poverty on families locally but less well placed to tackle the root causes or to deliver the employment or housing solutions, which rest with other organisations. Greater emphasis on family networks is likely to support children’s social and emotional development and enable them to access wider community networks.

We welcome the planned review of the current legislation that underpins the support provided to disabled children and their families. This group has specific needs in both early help and the child protection areas. The needs of disabled children in care, including transition to adult services, will again be discrete and planned for.

Whilst we are looking at differentiated vulnerabilities, risks and needs, the unaccompanied asylum-seeking group is a considerable cohort of looked after children and care leavers. Again, whilst applying the ambitions and principles of Stable Homes a differentiated response in terms of service design is likely to be needed.

Question 31: Potential impact, whether positive or negative, of the proposed changes on children’s rights

We welcome the strong focus on children’s rights and outcomes and their voices and also the recognition that disabled children, older children experiencing risk outside the home and looked after children, need differentiated support to enable them to participate and or access services.

We also welcome the recognition of children’s right to caring and trusting relationships with adults and the need for those who care for them to build loving relationships, although what this means to different children may need more consideration and definition.

We further welcome the focus on care-experienced children’s right to a good education and on care leavers’ right of access to education, including higher education, and to training and employment opportunities.

We have set out the need to maintain a focus on children. Think child, think family, think child again must be central to work across family help, child protection and for care experienced children.