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Published 26 January 2023
Subject: Letter from His Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman, to Sophie Langdale and Frances Oram, Directors of Children’s Social Care at DfE - GOV.UK
Letter from His Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman, to Sophie Langdale and Frances Oram, Directors of Children’s Social Care at DfE
Ofsted’s response to the DfE’s consultation on regulating supported accommodation for looked after children and care leavers aged 16 and 17
I wrote to the then Secretary of State Rt. Hon. Nadhim Zahawi MP, in December 2021, agreeing that Ofsted would develop and implement a new system of regulation and inspection for supported accommodation for looked after children and care leavers aged 16 and 17. Since then, we have worked hard to make sure we are ready to register and inspect providers within the planned timeframe. We will establish a system that will help to bring a much-needed rise in the quality of supported accommodation across the country.
I have read the current departmental consultation on the proposed quality standards and guidance with great interest. It is critical that the standards and regulations allow us to apply the kind of rigorous oversight that is needed while offering the right level of flexibility for commissioners and providers to be creative in a part of the sector that needs to respond to children’s diverse needs. We will be guided by our principles of ‘right touch’ regulation and will place the best interests of children firmly at the centre of our activity. We will expect to see that decisions for children to live in supported accommodation are made based on their individual needs.
We have worked closely with your team during the development of the standards and regulations. I am grateful for their constructive, collaborative approach and their positive response to challenge. I know that we are still talking to your team about some of the detail in the regulations and I assume that any changes made will read across into the accompanying guidance.
Key issues
Given our close and ongoing involvement in the development of these plans, I will limit my main comments to a small number of key issues.
As we have said for some time, it is not helpful to try to draw a clear distinction between ‘care’ and ‘support’. I agree they are both part of a continuum. While supported accommodation may not provide ‘care’ in the same way as a children’s home does, we certainly do not want providers to think that providing any kind of ‘care’ will automatically mean they are operating illegally. High-quality supported accommodation should always be caring, kind and nurturing. The draft guidance and the standards make this clear, and this will also be our expectation.
The sheer variety of supported accommodation means that we need to be cautious about taking an over-simplistic approach to registering providers. I am glad that it is proposed to establish several distinct categories of registration. I think it is sensible that we can limit providers’ registrations to those categories where there is clear evidence that they are equipped to deliver that type of provision effectively. This will also help us to maintain a good oversight of the range of different provisions nationally.
The diversity of commissioning arrangements also means that identifying who should apply to be the registered provider may not always be straightforward. We have sought to explain this during recent webinars we have hosted for potential providers, but the wide range of possible scenarios means that it is extremely difficult to give definitive guidance. Our main message is this: one organisation must take responsibility for meeting the standards and commissioners need to liaise effectively with providers to determine who is best placed to act as the registered provider.
Our registration guidance will include information that should help commissioners and providers reach those decisions. However, it would be helpful for the sector if the Department for Education guidance also included a clearer definition of a supported accommodation provider than is provided in the draft document. We will be happy to work with your team on this.
I welcome the standards’ emphasis on the need for children to have a secure sense of belonging, to feel valued, be protected from stigma, and to have good access to community activities and resources. These are all important aspects of children’s experiences as they move towards adulthood. We do not want, or need, a set of inflexible rules that get in the way of good decisions. But, in principle, I remain concerned about the use of mobile provision. It should be extremely rare and I only think it will be appropriate in very specific or unusual circumstances; it should never become routinely acceptable for children to live in temporary settings. I suggest that its general unsuitability be couched in stronger terms in the guidance. It will be very difficult for mobile settings to meet the quality standards and I fully expect our own registration and inspection guidance to reinforce this principle.
Overall, I think the proposals will provide Ofsted with a firm foundation for effective regulation. But I am well aware that there are enormous challenges ahead. The rising number of children in care in semi-independent or independent accommodation is undoubtedly driven to a great extent by, generally, the severe shortage of suitable care provision nationally and, more specifically, the high number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We will always endeavour to apply a proportionate and pragmatic approach to registration and inspection, but the safety and welfare of children must be our first priority. Our work is likely to identify poor experiences for children that regulation alone cannot resolve. We will share our intelligence responsibly to inform wider policy and practice.
We look forward to seeing how the feedback from stakeholders to your consultation may strengthen your proposals further.
Yours sincerely
Amanda Spielman His Majesty’s Chief Inspector
Subject: Children’s home distribution leaves most vulnerable placed furthest from home, Ofsted warns | CYP Now
Children’s home distribution leaves most vulnerable placed furthest from home, Ofsted warns
Fiona Simpson
Monday, July 11, 2022
Uneven distribution of children’s home placements across England leaves the most vulnerable children at risk of being placed furthest from their local area, Ofsted has warned.
Yvette Stanley: 'Children need provision of the right care, in the right place, at the right time'.
Children with mental health problems, or experience of abuse and neglect, are likely to be placed in children’s homes above the average distance of 36 miles away from their local area, a new report by the inspectorate states.
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- Residential Care: Demand, supply and sufficiency
The report What types of needs do children’s homes offer care for? looks at data in the year to 31 March 2020.
It states that supply does not match demand across different regions of England.
“Just five per cent of England’s children’s homes (seven per cent of places) are located in London, but London local authorities placed 11 per cent of all children living in homes [across England].
“In contrast, local authorities in the North West placed 19 per cent of all children living in children’s homes, but 25 per cent of all homes (23 per cent of places) are located in the region,” it states.
Yvette Stanley, Ofsted’s National Director for Children’s Social Care, said the research “suggests that local authorities are making a difficult choice between placing a child either in a home close by, or in one that is far away but relevant to their needs”.
Meanwhile, the report adds that 80 per cent of children living in children’s homes had special educational needs compared with 52 per cent all looked-after children and 15 per cent of all children.
Some 93 per cent of providers told Ofsted that they could accommodate children with complex need but just four per cent said that they could provide support for children with sensory impairment and just five per cent said they could take in children with complex health needs.
Reflecting on the outcomes of the report at the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) annual conference on Friday, Stanley told delegates that tackling issues around sufficiency around children’s residential care was the biggest challenge facing the sector.
She added that amid an increase in out-of-area placements and rising costs charged by private providers, she had “heard of more local authorities opening their own specialist residential provision”.
However, she raised concerns that the search for a “perfect match” placement for children with complex needs could leave councils “out of pocket” and children placed far from their local area.
“Children need provision of the right care, in the right place, at the right time. And for some children, it is only through a better needs analysis and planning across health and social care at a national level, that they will be able to stay closer to their family and friends,” she said.
Responding to the report, the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care (NCERCC) said the findings “indicate that government interventions at local and regional level have had little impact on changing the picture reported in previous years”.
Greater analysis of the needs of children in residential care is needed to improve sufficiency of specialist placements, Jonathan Stanley, NCERCC manager said, noting that: “It is only through a needs analysis method that we get to the ‘right child in the right place at the right time’. The sophistication needed makes for enhanced assessment supporting effective matching of needs to home, and efficient spending. This report shows that this move is now urgent.”
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