County's children in care services improve - Ofsted

A local authority's services for children in care have improved, but the councillor in charge admitted "we are still not yet where we want to be".

Ofsted inspectors made a focused inspection of Cambridgeshire County Council in June looking at children in unregistered homes and "the quality of matching, placement and decision-making for children in care".

The council's chief executive had previously said it could spend in excess of £20,000 a week on a single children's placement.

Ofsted found "most children in care continue to thrive in stable, supportive and caring homes" but improvements were needed in four areas, including more accommodation "to meet children's needs".

The use of unregistered homes - which Ofsted said a "small number of children" under Cambridgeshire's care did - contributed to a near £10m overspend by the council last financial year.

Such homes are not registered with or inspected by Ofsted - which is a criminal offence - but it can only issue warning letters to operators.

Ofsted inspectors said: "These arrangements are only used when all other options are exhausted, with senior leaders maintaining strong oversight.

"Some of the necessary detail about children's day-to-day experiences and care is not recorded within risk assessments."

It said that children's case records "do not always reflect senior leaders' detailed decision-making and oversight of these vulnerable children", something which the director of children's services agreed to "remedy".

Ofsted found: "With the growth of kinship care, more children now benefit from living in homes which are well matched to meet their identity and needs.

"Additionally, more children now benefit from leaving care with their legal permanence secured through special guardianship orders. This is a significant improvement over two years."

It also said since the previous inspection in March 2024 an improvement in workforce "stability" at every level had enabled workloads to decrease "so that social workers have the opportunity to improve children's experiences".

Edna Murphy, the Liberal Democrat chair of the children's and young people committee, said she was pleased with Ofsted's findings.

"This report affirms the substantial effort and resource that has been devoted to improving the experiences of children in the council's care over the last couple of years.

"We must be clear – we are still not yet where we want to be. We have not made as much progress in some areas as we would like – and the plans we have in place to address this are not yet positively impacting children's experiences."

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