SOMERSET County Council has been branded "inadequate" for how effective child protection services are.

A damning Ofsted inspection concluded that the service "is not doing what is required to keep chidlren and young people safe".

The inspectors said:

*not all children who need help to be safe get the right help quickly enough;

*social workers and other people who work with them need to make sure they really understand what has happened to chidlren and their families in the past as well as what is happening now so they can make better, safer plans for them;

*managers need to get better at checking the qualilty of work staff are doing and letting staff know if they are doing a good job or not. When they give social workers advice they need to write down what they decided to do and why;

*social workers need to make sure that the children they work with can attend meetings about them if they want to. If children don't want to attend these meetings, there are independent people who can speak up for them and social workers need to ask chidlren if they want someone to do this for them.

*managers need to make sure that chidlren who have a child protection plan are visited by the same social worker so chidlren get to know them and feel they can tell them their worriers.

On the plus side, the report, published this morning, (Monday, August 5), says:

*the people in charge of Somerset's children's services want to make life better for chidlren and their families. They know what improvements they need to make and have recently employed some good leaders who have lots of experience in helping councils keep children safe;

*the staff who work for Somerset County Council are hard working and enthusiastic. They want to do a good job and try hard to give children the help they need;

*there are lots of services for children and their families who need help in Somerset. Parents who have used them told inspectors they thought they had helped them understand and sort out their problems;

*when a child is at risk of immediate harm, social workers normally act quickly to protect them. All child protection enquiries are carried out by qualified social workers who are experienced and know what they need to do to keep chidlren safe.

Last year's Ofsted was also graded as 'inadequate' - three years after the authority was judged 'outstanding'.

Cllr Sam Crabb, leader of the LibDem Opposition at County Hall, said: "I am very saddened by this new Ofsted report, surely lessons from last years damming report should have been learnt and acted upon as fast as possible.

"Tragically this does not seem to be the case. To go from outstanding in 2009 to inadequate is horrendous and I want answers about what has changed for this to happen and why aren't the processes that should have been put in place after the 2012 report not acted upon quicker."

Cllr Justine Baker (LibDem), shadow on children and families, said: "This report is not good enough - the most vulnerable children in Somerset are being let down and this is not only extremely disappointing but disgraceful as the council are failing children that need the most support and help.

"What worried me is the report shows that not all children that need help are getting it quick enough and also not enough consistent support being given to those children. This report makes grim reading."

The council has pledged to act on all recommendations in the report.

Chief executive Sheila Wheeler said the report was “deeply disappointing” but pointed to Ofsted’s findings that major investments have been made into children’s social care and its recognition that improvements are well underway.
She added: “We had already identified areas for improvement and have been taking action.

“We now have the right people in the right place doing the right things.

"We will, of course, follow through all of Ofsted’s recommendations. Ofsted has recognised our investment in the service and our appointment of a nationally recognised Interim Director of Children’s Services, Peter Lewis, to steer us through the changes we need to make.

"We do acknowledge that our speed of change has not been fast enough.”