Ofsted praises tenacious social workers for work with adolescents

Services for adolescents in Islington are “strong and robust” and have “obvious investment”, Ofsted inspectors have found.

A focused visit of the service’s work with older children said social workers “show tenacity in their efforts to engage young people” and had high morale.

“A comprehensive range of well-coordinated interventions delivered through council and commissioned services ensures that there is a depth of provision available to meet the needs of young people,” the report said.

It added: “Substantive awareness raising and specialist training across the partnership have been undertaken by the exploitation and missing team.”

A vast majority of assessments were completed in a timely way, inspectors found, with clear direction and focus provided by managerial oversight, and social workers had specific training in trauma-informed practice.

“Social workers have manageable caseloads that enable them to have capacity to build trusting relationships with young people,” inspectors said.

Managers used extensive and comprehensive performance information to understand frontline practice, and inspectors found this was deployed effectively to underpin individual and strategic responses to vulnerable children.

It told the council to improve insufficient analysis in a small number of return home interviews, and inspectors identified that plans were not always “universally clear”.