Stockport council has been praised by Ofsted for maintaining ‘strong quality’ children’s services during the pandemic. The authority’s children’s services have been rated ‘good’ by the watchdog following an inspection carried out during late March and early April this year.
A new report says the council ‘continues to provide good services for children in need of help and protection and children in care and care leavers’. It also notes how ‘the strong quality of practice and services for families has been maintained, despite the high levels of Covid-19 and an increase in demand across the service’.
“There continues to be a strong early help offer and an increased focus on prevention, early intervention and mental health support for the most vulnerable children and families during the pandemic,” it adds.
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The findings have been welcomed by Chris McLoughlin OBE, the council’s director of children's services.
She said: “We are thrilled to have been awarded a 'Good' by Ofsted. We know each one of our team work so hard to improve the lives of children and families in Stockport, so to be recognised in this way by Ofsted is a fantastic reward. We will strive to build on the outlined areas for improvement and hope to use this result as a foundation for future success."
The report, published on Wednesday, finds that children in care and care leavers both receive ‘very effective support that meets their needs’. It also recognises the council’s ‘strong commitment’ to care leavers, noting that the care leavers forum and the New Belongings project ‘ensure they ‘feel listened to and valued’.
‘Creative initiatives’ such as this were said to ‘ensure that services are shaped around the needs of the people who experience them”. Senior leaders are also praised for having ‘focused relentlessly on further embedding the Stockport Family approach’ - said to ‘promote a strong and supportive culture, where children receive the right level of support at the right time’.
Social workers - whose work was said to be of a ‘high standard’ - told inspectors this approach and it was one of the reasons they liked working for the authority. Areas for improvement identified in previous inspections were found to have been ‘largely addressed’,with the quality of social work practice continuing to be ‘consistently strong’.
However the overall rating fell short of ‘outstanding’, with officials noting that ‘management oversight is not always as robust as it needs to be’. Senior leaders were also said to have plans for improving some service areas, but did ‘not always have sufficiently detailed understanding' of some areas of practice’.
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