Agenda item

 (10 mins intro by officer, 35 mins questioning)

Jane Wood (Director, Wellbeing) updated the Panel on some of the messages that had come out of the Ofsted Inspection of Slough Borough Council’s Children’s Social Care in November-December 2013.

The key point noted by the Panel was that there were no surprises in the verbal feedback received from Ofsted; progress had been noted, but that having had a slow start much more work was needed.

Members discussed the fundamental, underlying, issue regarding workforce and the need to:

• increase the workforce to bring down workloads;
• increase the number of permanent staff; and
• improve the accommodation of staff making it more conducive to social work practice requirements.

The Panel recognised the steps that had been taken to address these issues, and that more needed to be done to change how the council sells itself to potential employees.

In addition to the Workforce Strategy, the building blocks for improving social work practice were noted as a key ongoing aspect of the improvement programme, establishing effective pathways and commissioning processes.

Resolved – to receive the full Ofsted Report at an Extraordinary meeting of the Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Panel on the 19 February 2014.