Children’s service staff praised – improvement urged in management at Aberdeenshire

Services for children and young people in Aberdeenshire are performing well but can improve further in key areas, inspectors have concluded.

It follows a joint inspection of services across the Aberdeenshire Community Planning Partnership by an expert team led by the Care Inspectorate, with support from Education Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland. Inspectors looked at a wide range of services in the area between April and June 2015 and published their findings today.

Across nine quality indicators, inspectors found two to be ‘very good’ while five were rated ‘good.’ However, one quality indicator, ‘leadership of improvement and change’ was found to be ‘adequate’ and another, ‘planning and improving services’ was found to be ‘weak’.

Inspectors said they were confident that as the result of skilful interventions by staff on the ground and strong joint working, services are having a very positive impact on the wellbeing of individual children and young people and families in Aberdeenshire.

Staff are strongly committed to respecting the views and rights of children and young people and involve them meaningfully in decisions about their lives.

Collective ownership of the values and principles of ‘getting it right for every child’ is underpinning significant progress in intervening early in the lives of most children young people and families to prevent problems getting worse.

Children and young people in need of protection are being helped to keep safe and the response to concerns about their safety was prompt and effective for all but a few.
 
A commitment to promote nurturing care and support is improving the effectiveness of interventions for looked after children and partners are clear about their responsibilities as corporate parents.

However, inspectors also noted that for some vulnerable children and young people, including some who are looked after or care-leavers, partners were not able to demonstrate tangible and sustained improvements in their life chances.

The arrangements for joint planning and improving services need to be better coordinated in order to deliver improved outcomes and provide assurance about the quality of services.

The strategic direction of integrated children’s services is still developing and needs stronger collective leadership to deliver continuous improvements.

Karen Reid, chief executive of the Care Inspectorate said: “Protecting young people and ensuring that the services they and their families access are of the very highest standard is crucial.

“By working with our partners, joint inspections like this can ensure we build up an accurate picture of how services are performing.

“We want to answer the key question ‘how well are these services improving the lives of children, young people and their families?’

“Overall there are several positive points made in this report, but where there is room for improvement we expect the partnership take the necessary steps so that everyone in Scotland can access services which meet their needs and respect their rights.”

The report is available here: http://cinsp.in/1Lk4nu1