Issue - meetings

To provide an update on progress against the children’s services improvement plan to address the findings from the Ofsted inspection of local authority children’s services (ILACS) conducted in February and March 2024. This also includes the findings from the councillor visits to frontline services which took place in September 2025.

The committee received a report which provided an update on the progress of the children’s services improvement plan.

It was highlighted that the third Ofsted monitoring visit on cared for children, planning and achieving permanence was underway at the time of writing the report.  The monitoring visit concluded on 15 October 2025, and the report of the findings was expected to be published on 13 November 2025.

Progress continued to be made in delivering the improvement plan; since the last report to committee in September 2025, the percentage of actions completed had increased from 49% to 56%.

Officers were currently revising the quality assurance framework.

Members asked questions and provided comments in respect of the following:

-       Councillor Gardiner requested that he be invited to undertake a visit to frontline services, as it would be beneficial in his capacity as Opposition Leader. 

-       The committee felt that visits to a wide range of service areas were useful, informative, and provided opportunity of seeing how passionate staff were.  Visits and other training opportunities would be provided to new and existing committee members in due course.

-       Meeting arrangements for the Improvement Board and input from the Independent Chair.

-       Budgetary requirements and the minimum investment needed to improve services.

In response officers reported that:

-       Councillor Gardiner’s request to undertake a visit to frontline services would be followed up.

-       The Improvement Board continued to meet every six-weeks.  It was felt that the Independent Chair could provide input to the committee, further consideration would be given as to how best achieve this under the Work Programme item.  In conjunction with input from the Chair, the outcome of the recent Ofsted monitoring visit would be published shortly, and there would also be a Department for Education (DfE) review taking place in Spring 2026.

RESOLVED:

That the Children and Families Committee

1. Note the progress against the improvement plan.

2. Note the findings from the councillor visits to the cared for IRO service, child protection chair and LADO service and family group conferencing team in September 2025.