OFSTED has given a mixed report on Herefordshire children’s services, saying it has found some improvements, but also a good deal of “poor practice” still at the department.

The Government’s schools and children’s services inspectorate made a “monitoring visit” to Herefordshire Council in late March, the first such since it was judged “Inadequate” in July 2022.

The two inspectors found improvements, “from a very low base”, in the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) which responds to alerts of at-risk children, saying these “are now promptly identified and responded to”.

But their report adds: “For vulnerable children and families, the impact of this is limited as they experience poorer practice once allocated to a social worker for assessment”.

At this stage, children’s needs and risks are often “not sufficiently identified” and management of decisions on whether children are at risk of significant harm “not sufficiently robust”, they said.

Social workers listen and respond to the concerns of children themselves in only “a small minority” of cases, their report said.

However senior leaders at the council “are now more outward looking, proactively learning from better practice within the wider sector nationally” in response to the last autumn’s report.

“Some evidence of improvement [in assessment and care of children] has been seen in this monitoring visit, but the pace of improvement in some areas is too protracted,” the inspectors concluded.

Ofsted does not itself publish monitoring visit reports, but Herefordshire Council has chosen to make the findings public.

Director of children’s services Darryl Freeman accepted the inspectors’ findings, saying: “Improvements do not yet go far enough.

“It is essential we regain trust of those families and children we are here to help and we are committed to doing just that.”

But he added that he was encouraged that inspectors had started to see some very real improvements.

“Of course it is encouraging to see some improvements beginning to show in critical areas, such as what is known as the front door of our services - the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub and I want to thank everyone involved in achieving this.

“Inspectors concluded most children’s needs were promptly identified and acted upon. It is also encouraging to see inspectors recognised the strides forward made in the activity by early help workers and the success of the relaunched early-help telephone line.

"However only last week, with the findings of the Families Commission report, was the scale of the challenge before us once again underlined.

"It is clear from this monitoring visit feedback and our own assessments that the improvements seen just eight months after the inspection do not yet go far enough and we remain committed to improving services for children and their families in Herefordshire. 

"There is still poor practice and management oversight is not good enough. There remains weaknesses in the way we listen to children about their experiences. We need to urgently further increase our focus to drive forward far better standards of work in these areas. 

Children’s services were judged to be inadequate during an Ofsted Inspection last July. When this happens Ofsted carry out regular monitoring visits which focus on areas which need most improvement.

The first of these visits took place on March 29-30 with a focus on the ‘front-door’ to the service and the findings of this visit can be found here. The findings will be discussed at the cabinet meeting on Thursday, 22 June.

Cabinet member for Children and Young People Ivan Powell said: “This monitoring report underlines our own awareness of our current progress.

“We are putting some critical blocks in place to build on, but we must continue our focus and further increase our drive to embed improvement and better practice across the service.

“I want to say thank you to our children’s services workforce who are working hard to bring about improvement and for the recognition of their efforts that this feedback letter brings.

"I would also like to acknowledge again those experiences shared by families in the recently published report and re state my commitment to ensuring that remains a central focus of our improvement journey.”

Incoming cabinet member for children and young people Coun Ivan Powell said: “We are putting some critical blocks in place to build on, but we must continue our focus and further increase our drive to embed improvement and better practice across the service.”

The report will be discussed at the first meeting of the county’s new Conservative cabinet next Thursday (June 22).