Ofsted to judge councils on engaging with family networks in inspection shake-up
Councils are to be judged on how well their practitioners engage with family networks under a proposed shake-up designed to align inspections with the government’s children’s social care reforms, from spring next year.
Ofsted is also planning to assess councils separately on how well they support children and families and on the quality of their child protection services, under the proposed changes to the inspection of local authority children’s services (ILACS) framework. Currently the two are assessed together, under the ‘experiences and progress of children in need of help and protection’ judgment.
Another change would see the current four-point grading scale (outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate) replaced by a five-point scale (exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention, urgent improvement), which the inspectorate claimed would provide more nuance to grading.
As reported previously, Ofsted is proposing to penalise councils for placing children in care in unregistered homes by awarding them one of the two bottom grades (needs attention or urgent improvement) in the relevant judgment area.
Inspection plans take account of social care reforms
Ofsted has made changes to the ILACS over the past two years to take account of the Department for Education’s (DfE) objectives for the sector, as set out in the children’s social care national framework. The framework, which is statutory guidance that local authorities are expected to follow, sets four key outcomes for the children’s social care system:
- Children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need.
- Children and young people are safe in and outside of their homes.
- Children and young people are supported by their family network
- Children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes
Its latest proposals are designed to more fully align ILACS with the framework, which will involve increasing, from four to six, the number of areas that councils are assessed against.
Engaging with family networks judgment
While recent changes to ILACS have increased its emphasis on how well councils engage with family networks, Ofsted is now proposing to introduce a specific graded judgment related to this, in reflection of outcome 3 of the national framework.
In the consultation, the Ofsted said it anticipated this potentially including assessing the quality and timeliness of a council’s engagement with a child’s wider family network, the quality of support for kinship care and family group decision making (FGDM) provision.
The latter involves bringing family networks together to draw up a plan to respond to concerns about a child, with the support of practitioners involved with the family.
Under its Families First Partnership (FFP) programme, the DfE expects councils to have in place a fully operational FGDM service by March 2027.
Also, as of earlier this month, authorities have been under a duty to offer FGDM to families at the pre-proceedings stage, unless they consider doing so would not be in the best interests of the child, under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026.
Separate judgments on helping and protecting children
Reflecting the distinction between outcomes 1 and 2 of the national framework, Ofsted is also proposing to split its current help and protection judgment into two areas: the experiences of children receiving family help and those of children in need of protection.
Family help is the new multidisciplinary service working with families under targeted early help, child in need and child protection, which councils should have fully rolled out by March 2027. The service is designed to provide families with early, effective and non-stigmatising support – as far as possible co-ordinated by a consistent practitioner – to enable children to stay with their parents, whenever safe.
As Ofsted is responsible for inspecting councils’ statutory children’s services functions only, its proposed change is dependent on the DfE implementing consultative proposals to abolish the targeted early help category, which is non-statutory.
Should this go ahead, all family help provision would be delivered as services to children in need, under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, meaning it would all fall within Ofsted’s remit.
Retaining separate children in care and care leaver judgments
Despite children in care and care leaver services being united under outcome 4 of the national framework, Ofsted is proposing retaining its separate judgments of the two areas.
The inspectorate said that 45% of authorities had received separate grades for the two judgments in their most recent ILACS inspections.
“This tells us that children in care and those leaving care do not all receive the same quality of support,” it added. “Keeping these separate allows us to report more clearly and accurately on the distinct experiences of children in care and those leaving care.”
It also plans to retain its judgment on the impact of leaders, which the inspectorate said would cover two of the “enablers” of good outcomes in the national framework: that leaders drive conditions for effective practice and that the workforce is equipped and effective.
The third enabler – multi-agency working is prioritised and effective – would be looked at across all judgment areas.
Penalising councils for using unregistered children’s homes
Councils’ use of unregistered children’s homes is currently examined under both the judgments on children in care – in relation to children’s experiences – and the impact of leaders, in relation to councils’ fulfilment of their duty to ensure sufficient accommodation for young people.
Ofsted said it believed the fundamental issue around use of unregistered homes was about how well councils were meeting their sufficiency duty, so it is proposing that this be considered entirely under the impact of leaders’ judgment.
In addition, it is proposing that any council that makes use of unregistered provision would be given either a ‘needs attention’ or ‘urgent improvement’ grade. The proposal has sparked concerns from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), who has warned that it risks councils being held responsible for market failures that are beyond their control.
However, Ofsted said: “Commissioning a place in an illegal unregistered setting is a breach of the local authority’s legal duties under the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. A local authority that is not meeting its statutory duties cannot reasonably be deemed to have met the standards expected of it.”
The choice of grade would depend on whether use of unregistered provision was frequent or exceptional, and whether leaders had taken effective action to end it and increase the number of legal placements available to meet their sufficiency duty, it added.
Changes to assessments of children’s social care providers
Alongside the proposed changes to the ILACS, Ofsted is also consulting on amendments to the social care common inspection framework (SCCIF), which governs how it assesses providers, such as independent fostering agencies (IFAs) or children’s homes.
These would also see the five-point scale proposed for the ILACS applied to the SCCIF. In addition, Ofsted is proposing to:
- Add a new judgment on children’s enduring relationships, in line with the DfE’s emphasis on promoting these through its reforms.
- No longer make a judgment on the overall experiences and progress of children, in line with the removal of overall judgments across Ofsted’s inspection frameworks, including the ILACS, in response to its Big Listen consultation exercise in 2024. There would still be a judgment on the experiences and progress of children, but this would be judged independently of other evaluation areas, rather than being dependent on them as previously.
- Retain the judgments on how well children are helped and protected and the effectiveness of leaders and managers.
- Add a new judgment for IFAs on the quality of foster carer recruitment, assessment and support, in line with the DfE’s fostering reforms.
These changes would be phased in from 2027-28.
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