In a report issued this morning, Ofsted has rated Kent County Council’s children’s services as Outstanding - the highest ranking and one held by few councils across the country. This follows an inspection in May under the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) framework.
It has been a long journey of improvement. A little over a decade ago, KCC’s children’s services were found to be Inadequate. The hard work of improvement has taken place during an era of funding constraints, rising demand pressures on children’s services across the country, the pandemic and, for Kent, the arrival, especially in 2015-16 and 2020-22, of large numbers of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children.
Ofsted rated Kent’s children’s services against four criteria:
- The impact of leaders on social work practice with children and families - Outstanding
- The experiences and progress of children who need help and protection - Good
- The experiences and progress of children in care and care leavers - Outstanding
- Overall effectiveness - Outstanding
Ofsted found that children are at the centre of KCC’s practice; that social work and early help teams work effectively and understand well the children and families they support and engage with; that there is ‘outstanding practice’ in support of children in care and care leavers; and that the political and senior officer leadership is committed, well-informed and prepared to invest in the service. One of the most heartening findings was that staff are ‘rightly proud of the work they do’ and ‘love working for Kent’.
There are a,ways challenges, and always areas in which we can improve further, and the report sets these out. But this is, taken in the round, a fantastic tribute to the staff who, day in and day out, dedicate themselves to the children and young people of the county.
You can find our media release, with a link to the Ofsted report, here
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