Swansea Council’s Child and Family Services has continued to make improvements during the past year, according to inspectors.
The Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales said the Council had put in place far more effective corporate and political arrangements to take forward and sustain service improvements for vulnerable children.
The Council’s Cabinet Member for Social Services, Nick Tregoning, welcomed the findings but said there was still plenty more work to do.
The inspectors identified a number of strengths and improvements made by the Council during this period:
- Clear strategic vision for children’s services that has corporate and cross party political support;
- Increased budget for children’s services, with greater accountability through a risk management and performance framework, along with a strengthening of straight forward financial information for managers;
- Increasingly effective and accountable leadership from the social services senior management team, with a strong children’s services management team, with improving skill sharing and work with adult services;
- Clear and visible leadership from the Director of Social Services and the Head of Children’s Services, with informed and effective input from the Lead Director for Children’s Services;
- A workforce that is very committed to providing the best possible service for vulnerable children and is ambitious for all children in Swansea;
- A clearer, strategic “golden thread” running through key partnership boards and associated plans;
- Some excellent direct work with children, with some improvement in the overall quality of assessment, care management and child protection services;
- Sound performance management information that enables the local authority to have a better understanding of its core business; and,
- Sustaining the range and quality of services, including those that promote independence and social inclusion.
The report said, “The review team feel there are clear improvements over the last twelve months with a sound and effective momentum for change, with potentially the right building blocks being put in place in the coming year to deliver necessary improvement. That said, there remain further challenges to deliver and sustain service improvement, and the review team judged that the local authority remains, at present, uncertainly placed to deliver and sustain service improvement.”
Cllr Nick Tregoning said, “I am pleased that the inspectors have recognised the hard work and efforts put in by staff across the service to continue the improvements, despite a significant increase in referrals and workload.
“These improvements are across the board and in key areas such as leadership, cross-party working, performance management, the range of services we provide and the work of our front-line staff.
“The important thing now is to build on this foundation to ensure these improvements are embedded in the service and for the long-term benefit of vulnerable children and their families. I am pleased to learn the report considers the building blocks for sustained improvement are now in place.
“The Deputy Minister wants us to continue working with the Intervention Board, whose work will be re-focused to a number of key areas such as recruitment and retention, initial and core assessments, strengthening partnership arrangements and performance management.”
Cllr Tregoning said the improvements in partnership working and scrutiny arrangements were a major step forward, but further work was needed.
“I am pleased the Deputy Minister recognised the good practice being delivered by our frontline staff who have put in a tremendous amount of effort.
“I’m also pleased the Deputy Minister is clear that there are very real green shoots of recovery and commitment from frontline staff through to senior politicians to nurture these.”
Cllr Mark Child, Chair of the Council’s Child and Family Overview and Scrutiny Board, said: “I’m pleased to see that Scrutiny has been praised, and has helped raise performance. I thank the effort of everyone involved for this. We have seen in Scrutiny that the Authority still has a long way to go to provide consistently acceptable Child and Family Services. This CSSIW report confirms that, although I think it also shows Swansea is going in the right direction.”
Cllr Paxton Hood-Williams, Vice-Chair of the Board, added: “It is clear that the department has made significant progress in the last 12 months. This is of real credit to all the staff in the department. who have achieved this in the face of a major increase in workload, referred to in the report.
“This speaks volumes for their dedication and commitment. However, there is still a long way to go, and this is spelt out in section 1.3.4 of the report. It is crucial that the improvement, already achieved, become embedded and built upon to ensure that the vulnerable children of Swansea are properly protected.”
The CSSIW report can be found at http://wales.gov.uk/cssiwsubsite/newcssiw/publications/ourfindings/swansea/swanrvw/?lang=en
