Issue - meetings

The Board received a report of the Strategic Director, Children and young People on the outcome of the recent Ofsted inspection of Adoption Services.

In August 2006, CSCI carried out an inspection of Halton’s Adoption Service. Prior to this it had been acknowledged that there were issues for the service to address and progress had already commenced on recruiting a suitable staff team, adding management capacity and developing practice.

Whilst this progress and the plans for the future were accepted as appropriate by the Inspectors, the outcome of the Inspection was that the service provided Poor outcomes.

As a result, the inspectors imposed 11 statutory requirements and made 31 recommendations. All statutory requirements were achieved within the timescales that were given and all the recommendations were worked on over the following months.

On 3^rd March 2008, prior to the Joint Area Review, Inspectors returned to Halton for a Random Inspection of the Adoption Service. The outcome of the inspection was that the overall quality rating of the service was Good. The inspection report noted that the agency had made considerable efforts to address previous issues and “the work undertaken by the agency had resulted in an improved service being provided to adopters, children, their birth parents and family”.

As a result of the inspection, there was 1 statutory requirement and 6 recommendations. The statutory requirement related to information held on the adoption service’s personnel and this was now being addressed. It was asked that the Officers be thanked for all their hard work in this field. The recommendations would be addressed over coming months.

RESOLVED: That

(1)       the contents of the report be noted; and

(2)       the Ofsted Inspection report be endorsed.