Child safety now 'adequate'

Published 2 Sep 2010 07:30 0 Comments

COUNCIL care for vulnerable children in Wokingham borough is now judged to be “adequate”.

A Joint Area Review published in January last year found Wokingham Borough Council’s safeguarding of looked-after children to be “inadequate” but a two-week follow-up inspection last month (July) found that substantial improvements have been made.

Ofsted inspectors, who visited the council with a representative from the Care Quality Commission, wrote in their report, released on Friday: “Following a direction by the Secretary of State, the council chose to replace the entire senior management group of children’s services in Autumn 2009. Since then substantial and rapid improvements in safeguarding services have been secured.

“Whilst these cannot yet provide evidence of a sustained track record, improvements have nonetheless been achieved in many core areas of safeguarding practice and performance.” During the inspectors’ latest visit, there were 81 children in the care of the council, 21 who had recently left care and 46 who had child protection plans, most because of neglect (85%), followed by physical abuse (9%) and emotional abuse (4%).

The council’s work was found to be adequate in all 33 assessed areas. Possible findings are “inadequate”, “adequate”, “good” or “outstanding”.

The inspectors praised the council’s strong leadership, increased levels of accountability and improvements to the assessment and referral service.

However, the inspectors also wrote: “Out of hours services do not provide adequate services for children and young people. It is accepted that more effective arrangements for ensuring that children are not unnecessarily detained in police custody overnight are required as well as the assured availability of forensic medical capacity for children suspected as having been harmed and that access to suitable local inpatient hospital care for 16-18-year-olds with acute mental health needs to be strengthened.”

The report will be addressed by the Children’s Trust Board.

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This article appeared in Villager 01 Sep 10

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