MIDDLESBROUGH'S children’s services department no longer requires direct oversight from a commissioner, two years after Ofsted found widespread failures.

Children and Families Minister Will Quince MP has approved a report which stated that the council is no longer required to be overseen by Department for Education commissioner Peter Dwyer.

The minister has also granted the council’s bid for £330,000 to support the department.

The council’s head of children’s services Sue Butcher said: “This is a real step forward and a testament to everyone who has worked towards this goal.

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“Everyone in the department is giving their all to support Middlesbrough’s most vulnerable children and families. It’s a true team effort and we’re well aware of how much hard work still needs to be done.”

The council’s children’s services department has worked with Mr Dwyer to improve its services since January 2020 after Ofsted inspectors found there were “serious and widespread failures that do not protect children, and that leave them in harmful situations for too long.”

The damning report from Ofsted at the start of last year, which rated children’s services as inadequate, also highlighted how children had been “chronically neglected” for too long before they were helped.

However, in the commissioner’s report that was released in July 2021, which has just been approved by Mr Quince due to delays because of the government reshuffle in September, there were signs of considerable progress.

One of the key improvements was the significant reduction in the number of children in care, which has been brought about by moving children on to their permanent homes more quickly.

To put this into perspective, 702 children were looked after by the council in August 2020 compared to 539 in July 2021.

However, the report did call for less reliance on agency staff and said that referral rates, despite some improvement, were still too high.

Middlesbrough Mayor Andy Preston said: “To have the commissioner’s recommendation signed off by government is a boost to everyone working so hard to turn the department round. I’d like to thank the commissioner for his support and guidance.

“We’re committed to working alongside Ofsted, the Department for Education and all our partners to keep things going in the right direction.”

An Ofsted visit was carried out remotely in May 2021 and the findings were mixed.

Positives included the department’s quick response to the pandemic, that social workers were creative and persistent, and that the multi-agency children’s hub, often the first point of contact with the department, had improved.

However, there was concern that some workloads, despite a decrease, were too high, there were too many changes in social workers for some children, and too much social work was still of “variable quality”.

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