Scores of children’s services have not been fully inspected

25 Mar 10
Fears that vulnerable children could be at risk have risen with the news that child protection services in 60 councils in England have not been properly inspected.

By Lucy Phillips

25 March 2010

Fears that vulnerable children could be at risk have risen with the news that child protection services in 60 councils in England have not been properly inspected.

Ofsted head Christine Gilbert told MPs on March 22 that only 87 of the 147 local authorities that the watchdog is responsible for had been subject to unannounced inspections. Just 15 had been through full, two-week examinations since the inspectorate’s assessment process was beefed up last June following a number of high-profile failures by children’s social workers.

Giving evidence to the children, schools and families select committee, Gilbert admitted the previous regime of annual performance assessments was ‘desk-top driven’ and did not expose the realities on the ground like on-the-spot scrutiny. The discrepancy in approach led to Ofsted giving ‘good’ ratings to the London Borough of Haringey, based purely on data submitted by the council, before the Baby Peter case was made public in 2008.

Labour committee member Helen Southworth drew attention to her own Warrington South constituency, where child safeguarding services were rated ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ in 2008, but were judged inadequate under the new process.

‘Which report was right and how were the staff supposed to deal with the difference?’ she asked.

Gilbert replied: ‘The most recent assessment is based on inspection. I changed the approach to our assessment of children’s services because the previous approach was based on data and insufficiently focused on what was going on on the ground. I would have done that earlier if I could.’

All authorities are due to receive unannounced two-day inspections by the end of July, and then annually. They will also be subject to a fortnight long assessment every three years. 

Gilbert denied accusations from the MPs that changes to the inspection process had been prompted by the death of Baby Peter, although she admitted it made Ofsted ‘look more closely’ at inspection proposals.

But Labour MP and committee chair Barry Sheerman maintained: ‘To an outsider it looks like because of Baby Peter and a couple of other high-profile cases you realised what you were doing was giving confidence to local authority children’s services departments... they were thinking they were pretty good... but when there’s a crisis and a child dies, you do it in totally different way.’

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