Nottingham city council has been marked as ‘inadequate’ due to child services fail

Ofsted inspectors have downgraded Nottingham City Council to ‘inadequate’ after children were left waiting six weeks to see a social worker. 

The rating was confirmed after inspectors discovered Nottingham’s Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) was not providing children with the help they needed.  

Most child cases, including ones in which they were at risk of serious harm, were not processed within the correct timescales. Children who met the threshold for needing a social worker were left for six weeks. This meant partners sometimes took as long as 16 days to follow up on social workers requests.  

Due to slow follow ups, children were experiencing repeated contacts and referrals before getting the correct help.  

Senior leaders within Ofsted noticed these backlogs in the MASH in November 2021, but the council’s efforts to improve their timeliness did not go accordingly as more children have since been referred. 

In May this year the council hired an extra social work team member, but inspectors found this had not been effective in ensuring a safe and timely response to children in need. 

Another reason for downgrading the council was Ofsted found that non-social workers were being allowed to handle ‘complex’ safeguarding issues. 

Unqualified professionals were being left in charge of documenting children’s personal reasons for being in care.

When it came to scheduling a return home interview, which occur after a child is found after having gone missing from a home, members of staff lacked sufficient knowledge on their reasons for being there. 

Cheryl Barnard, Nottingham’s Portfolio Holder for Children, Young People and Schools has said the council has taken full responsibility for Ofsted’s discovery. 

She said everyone in the children’s services team is now dedicated to providing the best care for children and will do whatever it takes to improve.  

She said: ‘I am confident that we have the right people in place to take on board all the feedback and recommendations from Ofsted and provide the right care and support. 

‘We’ve taken immediate action over the summer to make swift improvement in key areas such as engaging more agency social workers to support whilst we recruit more permanent staff. We have moved swiftly to agree recruitment for additional officers to support the service when children go missing and to work with children who are leaving care.’ 

Photo by Markus Spiske