Care Inspectorate Wales has published its latest update as part of ongoing monitoring of Bridgend Council children’s social services (pdf).
A follow-up inspection took place in November 2022 – six months after the previous follow-up inspection in May 2022.
The good news is that there have been further improvements, and areas of good practice, that the inspectorate expects to be maintained. This includes:
- Improved provision of professional development tools and resources for social workers.
- There are good examples of partnership working with outside agencies, with an ongoing review on information sharing – which is one of the recommendations from the Logan Mwangi case review.
- The council reacts faster to urgent child protection cases, with meetings between BCBC and other partner agencies now happening at short notice.
- The quality of information being used in assessments has improved and is more detailed, while workload supervision has improved as well.
- Parents, carers and young people are fully involved in safeguarding procedures and the council is working on a “parent’s charter” to understand their experiences of working with children’s social services.
Despite this progress, the inspectorate identified areas that continue to require improvement:
- The social service workforce situation is “fragile” and risks impacting ongoing improvements – although management of staff and workloads has improved.
- Turnover of staff has impacted service consistency and made it more difficult for families to develop a working relationship with social workers; some families and carers continue to feel they’re not properly listened to.
- BCBC and Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board need to make better use of early help services, particularly for the emotional well-being of children – such as counselling – as there’s “unmet demand”. More generally, the council needs to “prioritise work to ensure children and families access the right support at the right time.”
- BCBC should ensure that looked-after children aren’t housed with unregistered residential placement providers.
- BCBC needs a consistent policy on child exploitation; work has started on this but it’s not moving fast enough.
