Worcestershire Council has made insufficient progress in addressing high caseloads and low staff capacity in its children’s services department, according to Ofsted’s latest unannounced inspection report.
The council failed to follow the 2008 joint area review recommendation to increase staff capacity and ensure the quality of management.
“There has been only limited progress and management action to improve the services in order that all children are properly safeguarded,” Ofsted’s report stated. “During the course of the inspection, several cases of immediate concern were referred to the local authority for action to ensure the well-being of the child involved.”
Other areas for development included cases that were not allocated to staff with the right skills and experience, delayed child protection strategy meetings and variable quality of initial and core assessments.
Strengths identified by Ofsted included multi-agency procedures and a good out-of-hours service.
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