New Ofsted reports: yet another call to do more with less

BASW has challenged Ofsted to focus on causes and not just effects after the children’s service inspectorate identified key practice issues surrounding the protection of vulnerable babies and young people.

The comments follow the publication of two new Ofsted reports highlighting the importance of rigorous and preemptive risk assessment of both babies and older teenagers.

Hilton Dawson, BASW chief executive said: “Early intervention is costly in terms of both time and finance – the reality is social workers are currently suffering a paucity of both. Long term intervention work with these important groups requires a systemic commitment to supporting and enabling social workers who are currently having to handle rising caseloads, threats to funding, the flight of experienced social workers from frontline practice and the lack of priority given to embedding effective joint working.”

He added: “Although the report rightly focuses on two important age groups–babies, for whom early intervention is crucial, and teenagers who are all too often given insufficient focus – the truth of the matter is, they tell us little that is new.

“Ofsted’s leaders would serve children better if they were to instead highlight the many challenges facing service providers in trying to safeguard the lives of so many vulnerable children and young people.”

Ages of concern: learning lessons from serious case reviews was formally published today and is compiled from serious case reviews dating back to 2007. 

Read the full report here