It’s just one criticism in a much longer letter,
which, to be fair, does cite strengths as well as weaknesses. But I was more
than irritated to read the following paragraph penned by an Ofsted inspector:
“Children are seen regularly and are seen
alone by social workers who know them well. The views of children and young
people are identified and reflected well in assessments and care planning arrangements.
However, social workers are routinely
seeing children during school hours. Whilst this is with the permission of the
school staff, children are thus missing lessons which has the potential to adversely
affect their educational outcomes.”
[Monitoring visit of Torbay children’s services, 23 January 2017 – my emphasis]
Would the inspector, I wonder, have made
the same comment about children seeing their family doctors, or having hospital
appointments, during school hours? I suspect not. Nor does the inspector appear
to reflect on the fact that Children’s Services in Great Britain are funded
largely on the assumption that the staff should
work office hours, not evenings and weekends. Not to mention the fact that
school is often the only safe place for a child to talk about their home
experiences without fear of being overheard by family members.
The inspector’s comments have the ring of
barrel-scraping; dredging-up just one more thing to taunt an authority already
struggling to overcome a judgement of ‘inadequate’. And they display a self-righteous disregard
for the realities of service provision in the age of austerity. Cash-strapped
councils might welcome suggestions from Ofsted about how to work more
effectively, but to be told to find resources which simply don’t exist is like
receiving a slap-in-the-face.
Ofsted has never struck the right note with
its heavy-handed and unthinking this-is-wrong-put-it-right approach to
inspecting children’s services. Challenging hard-pressed services to do the
impossible is not a good recipe for improvement. Rather it is a formula for
destroying morale and frustrating positive action.
