Removing a council's 'inadequate' children's services would "distract from its improvement", and its new leadership team should be given the chance to make progress, the government has been advised.
Sefton's Department for Education-appointed commissioner, Paul Moffat, has recommended that the DfE should not turn the Merseyside authority's services over to an independent trust or invite another council to take them over, in a report completed in September but published last week.
However, Moffat said that the option of removal should not be ruled out and warned that Sefton would need ongoing government oversight for the "foreseeable future" to tackle significant management and practice problems.
The DfE sent Moffat into the authority in June, with a remit to determine whether it had the capacity and capability to improve over a reasonable timescale or whether it should have its services removed, after Ofsted rated it 'inadequate' across the board.
'Serious failures' identified by Ofsted
In an inspection in February and March, the inspectorate found “serious and widespread failures” in safeguarding, creating delays in meeting the needs of “highly vulnerable children”, in part due to a lack of social workers and lack of management oversight.There was also “widespread and unnecessary delays in securing timely permanence” for children in care, too many of whom were in placements that had not been fully assessed as safe or suitable to meet their needs. It also said a "lack of stable, senior management” had left the service in a “precarious” state.
Moffat reviewed the council's progress from June to September this year. This followed the appointment of a new director of children's services, Martin Birch, who was part of the leadership team at Sunderland's Together for Children trust that oversaw its journey from 'inadequate' to 'outstanding' from 2018-21. Moffat said Sefton had also appointed "talented and experienced" assistant directors to bolster leadership capacity, along with a new principal social worker.
'Good start' to improvement
He concluded that the authority had "made a good start to its improvement work" through its new leadership, as well as demonstrating a "readiness to accept support, the start of a cultural shift and sound actions to construct its improvement programme".And while some staff and frontline managers had had an "us and them" experience with previous interim senior managers, Moffat said that social workers had welcomed the openness and visibility of the new leadership team.
However, he warned that Sefton's progress "remains hampered by workforce challenges, quality of practice, which is still not good enough, and as yet ineffective and unaligned improvement mechanisms".
