Fourteen councils and trust that runs three services selected as children’s social care improvement teams (CITs), with a remit to partner with struggling authorities to support improvement and embed DfE reforms.
The Department of Education has selected a group of councils to help others improve their children’s social care services and deliver on the DfE’s reform programme.
Fourteen councils and a children’s trust that runs services in three areas have been selected as children’s social care improvement teams (CITs), with the DfE due to announce a further tranche of authorities later this year.
The CIT scheme is the latest iteration of DfE-funded sector-led improvement provision to help struggling local authorities, and has a particular focus on delivering on the government’s children’s social care reforms.
These are designed to improve support for parents and family networks, to prevent children going into care, and sharpen the quality of child protection practice, through the so-called Family First Partnership programme; to improve the sufficiency, stability and quality of care placements for looked-after children, and significantly boost support for care leavers.
The councils selected to help others improve
The organisations selected were all rated good or outstanding overall at their latest Ofsted inspections or, if inspected following the inspectorate’s abolition of the overall rating in April, received a mixture of good and outstanding grades.
They comprise Achieving for Children, the trust that runs services in the London boroughs of Kingston and Richmond, and in Windsor and Maidenhead, and 14 councils: the London boroughs of Camden, Hillingdon, Merton, Newham and Redbridge, plus Durham, Essex, Hertfordshire, Luton, Manchester, North Tyneside, Norfolk, South Gloucestershire and York councils.
Of the 17 services selected, seven are from London, four from the East of England, two from the North East, one from each of the North West, South East, South West and Yorkshire and the Humber, and none from the East Midlands.
The role of children’s social care improvement teams
“CITs will work alongside and in partnership with local authorities to provide support to them with implementing reform,” said the DfE, in a reform implementation plan, published in May.
“These teams will be drawn from local authorities with the expertise, leadership capability and capacity to support other local authorities to implement safe, sustainable children’s services aligned with reforms to the care system, Families First Partnership programme and the national framework.” The children’s social care national framework is statutory guidance for local authorities designed to enable them to deliver on the objectives of the reforms.
In a statement on its participation, Hillingdon said it would be “paired with a local authority this autumn, which it will go on to support for up to two years”. It is not clear whether this approach will be followed in all cases.
The CITs will also work in tandem with a group of expert advisers appointed by the DfE to help councils who are struggling to implement its reforms.
Source: Community Care
