By Lucy Phillips
21 January 2010
There is little appetite for stripping Ofsted of its role in children’s services despite continued criticism of ‘inconsistent’ and ‘flawed’ inspections, Public Finance has been told.
Dame Denise Platt, former chair of the now defunct Commission for Social Care Inspection, said that nobody was ‘in the business of creating new inspectorates or reorganising’ in the current economic climate.
‘It’s too expensive. People are looking for bodies to merge, not set up,’ she said.
The CSCI lost its responsibility for children’s services to the education watchdog in 2007. But Ofsted has struggled to master its new remit. It failed to spot child protection problems at the London Borough of Haringey, where the Baby Peter case occurred.
Despite such high-profile failures, Platt told PF that confidence in the schools and children’s services regulator had not necessarily been lost. ‘An inspectorate can’t offer guarantees, it’s about getting the services in the council to get to grips and start solving the problems themselves.’
Platt, now a member of the Audit Commission, spoke to PF on January 20 after giving evidence to the children, schools and families select committee. She told the committee, which is considering Ofsted’s role in children’s services, that the transfer of responsibilities from the CSCI to Ofsted had occurred at the ‘wrong time’. Children’s services were in the middle of a reorganisation and consequently were already ‘operating at high risk’.
Valuable expertise in children’s services had also been lost through the transfer, she said. Ofsted only recently appointed its first director with a social care background.
The committee also heard criticism of Ofsted from other witnesses, although it was conceded that lessons were being learnt.
Kim Bromley-Derry, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said that after all the ‘change and churn’ in the sector ‘we have lost more than we have gained in terms of quality of inspectorate’.
21 January 2010
There is little appetite for stripping Ofsted of its role in children’s services despite continued criticism of ‘inconsistent’ and ‘flawed’ inspections, Public Finance has been told.
Dame Denise Platt, former chair of the now defunct Commission for Social Care Inspection, said that nobody was ‘in the business of creating new inspectorates or reorganising’ in the current economic climate.
‘It’s too expensive. People are looking for bodies to merge, not set up,’ she said.
The CSCI lost its responsibility for children’s services to the education watchdog in 2007. But Ofsted has struggled to master its new remit. It failed to spot child protection problems at the London Borough of Haringey, where the Baby Peter case occurred.
Despite such high-profile failures, Platt told PF that confidence in the schools and children’s services regulator had not necessarily been lost. ‘An inspectorate can’t offer guarantees, it’s about getting the services in the council to get to grips and start solving the problems themselves.’
Platt, now a member of the Audit Commission, spoke to PF on January 20 after giving evidence to the children, schools and families select committee. She told the committee, which is considering Ofsted’s role in children’s services, that the transfer of responsibilities from the CSCI to Ofsted had occurred at the ‘wrong time’. Children’s services were in the middle of a reorganisation and consequently were already ‘operating at high risk’.
Valuable expertise in children’s services had also been lost through the transfer, she said. Ofsted only recently appointed its first director with a social care background.
The committee also heard criticism of Ofsted from other witnesses, although it was conceded that lessons were being learnt.
Kim Bromley-Derry, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said that after all the ‘change and churn’ in the sector ‘we have lost more than we have gained in terms of quality of inspectorate’.
