Will Forster

Campaigning to be the Lib Dem MP for Woking, Deputy Leader of Woking Borough Council and Councillor in South Woking Learn more

Read more on this

Read more on this

Read more on this

Read more on this

Ofsted calls Surrey’s Children’s Services ‘inadequate’

by willforster on 16 May, 2018

The publication today of the Ofsted report into Surrey County Council’s Children’s Services makes difficult reading, and tells a story of a slow, almost dilatory approach to improvement since the last Ofsted inspection. Both the last inspection and the one just published rates Surrey’s Children’s Services as ‘inadequate’.

I really recommend reading as much of the report as you can here, but if you don’t, the two key findings that stood out to me was that the report states social workers feel ill equipped and overworked, resulting in a ‘tick-box’ system and that large numbers of children detained by Police without a charge due to shortage of emergency local authority accommodation.

The Lib Dems and I agree with Ofsted and the County Council that the right leadership and governance arrangements are now in place to make rapid progress, but we are concerned about the lost years for the children in care.  Surrey County Council has been far too slow to recognise the urgent need for modernisation and improvement.  The new appointment of an Executive Director for Children, Families and Learning gives me confidence going forward, but nothing can repair the years when children received poor support and were at risk.

Each and every recommendation in the report must be implemented and we as the opposition at County Hall will do our best to ensure that they are.  As the richest county in the country, Surrey should have been failing its most vulnerable children and young people.

   1 Comment

One Response

  1. Ian Clarke says:

    Maybe the issue is with the services manager . She needs to be sacked . We were persecuted by her and the inadequate service with no evidence what so ever . Broke up our foster care home and ruined the foster kids lives and ours. The people that are running the service need to be dismissed and replaced . And listen to foster carers views as they are the true professionals not the social workers .

Leave a Reply to Ian Clarke

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>