Labour opposition councillors 'deeply troubled' by inadequate Ofsted grade for Northamptonshire Children's Trust Fostering Agency that 'fails to protect its children'

Northamptonshire Children's Trust Fostering Agency has been found inadequate in all areas
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Following an Ofsted report that highlighted ‘serious’ and ‘widespread’ failures in the county’s fostered children service, opposition councillors for both unitary authorities covering Northamptonshire have called for urgent investment and action.

Northamptonshire Children's Trust Fostering Agency, the trust managing the county’s fostering service, was graded inadequate in all areas – the lowest grade possible.

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Inspectors said that failures have left Northamptonshire’s fostered children ‘not protected’ and their welfare ‘not promoted or safeguarded’.

Northamptonshire Children's Trust Fostering Agency inadequate in all areas, says shocking Ofsted reportNorthamptonshire Children's Trust Fostering Agency inadequate in all areas, says shocking Ofsted report
Northamptonshire Children's Trust Fostering Agency inadequate in all areas, says shocking Ofsted report

The independent fostering agency, formed as a trust in 2020, provides fostering service for both West Northants Council (WNC) and North Northants Council (NNC) – taking over from the now disbanded Northamptonshire County Council.

Shadow cabinet member for children’s services for WNC, Cllr Danielle Stone (Lab), said: “This is a deeply troubling report that paints a picture of a service that is in trouble. The issues that have been highlighted are not new, they are the same that appear time and time again.

“In West Northants we inherited a really bad situation from the county council. It is a sad fact that our children have been failed for 10 years. This has been made worse by the national under-investment in children.

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"Social workers are under pressure with caseloads that are too high, with technology that is clunky, where too much time is spent travelling to visit families and not enough time spent with families.

“Whatever the reason, we need to re-open our children’s centres. We need more support for parents. We need to train, support and pay our foster families better.

"We need to recruit more family support staff to assist social workers. We need significant investment in technology. We must urgently find ways of easing the strain and making our children safe.”

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Northamptonshire Children's Trust Fostering Agency inadequate in all areas, says...

Inspectors raised concerns about safeguarding practice across the agency, children’s complaints and concerns not consistently being recognised, recorded and responded to appropriately, and staff retention and stability being a huge challenge.

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At the time of the inspection, 495 children were being cared for including mainstream foster families and connected carers.

Opposition councillors for North Northants Council say they have been warning the NNC’s ruling executive of the state of the fostering system ‘for years’.

A spokesman for the group said: “The findings in the recent Ofsted inspection of the fostering service are stark which shows we are failing our children in care.

"No child, least of all those in most need, should be experiencing this level of neglect when they are at their most vulnerable.”

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Cllr Leanne Buckingham says she raised concerns at a full council meeting in December 2021 that foster carers were not being supervised adequately, there was high turnover of allocated social workers and young people struggled to have their needs and concerns heard.

Cllr Buckingham said: “At this meeting I raised my concerns of the first-hand experience that I had witnessed – one young man in a foster placement in Corby had been allocated to three different social workers and had failed to find a suitable school placement.”

NNC’s chief executive, leader and executive member for Children’s Service met with Cllr Buckingham to hear the experience of newly-qualified foster carers.

She said: “I appreciate that children’s social care is a challenging environment with such a high volume of staff turnover and a national shortage of both social workers and foster carers. But we need to do more to ensure that our most vulnerable children are supported and cared for.

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“We need to take a pragmatic approach to the improvement of services and that starts with the fundamentals of having a safe space to live and thrive.

“I call for a cross party improvement board to work with the Children’s Trust, in publishing an urgent action plan to protect our children in the foster care system.”

WNC shadow cabinet member for education and Northamptonshire Corporate Parenting Board member, Cllr Harry Barrett (Lab) added: “This report is a challenging read and serious questions must be raised about the quality of care that has been provided to these children.

“Why is it that a service that was seen to be improving has slumped back in to failing and making the mistakes it has been making for nearly a decade?

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“We must understand why this keeps happening to children that are in our care, why does this service appear to be going backwards not forwards, fundamentally why can’t Northamptonshire protect its children?”