Further progress made in Birmingham’s children's social care

An Ofsted report has highlighted how Birmingham Children’s Trust ‘has made further progress in improving the quality of services for young people leaving care'.

As the first monitoring visit made by Ofsted to Birmingham Children’s Trust, after Birmingham City Council placed the delivery of children’s social care in an independent trust in April 2018, the report from the inspectorate also found that children are benefitting from stable long term living arrangements, that there is a continuing focus on reducing the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) and a new pathway plan template is a ‘significant improvement’ enabling young people’s views and aspirations to be better captured.

Kate Booth, cabinet member for Children’s Wellbeing at Birmingham City Council, said: “As the newly appointed member responsible for overseeing the work of the Birmingham Children’s Trust, I am very pleased to see that children’s services in Birmingham continues to make progress on its improvement journey. It is encouraging to find that all social workers know well and understand young people leaving care and in long term care. It is good to see that our social workers commitment in continuing to support our young people to develop both academically and vocationally has been noted.”

Andy Couldrick, chief executive of Birmingham Children’s Trust, said: “We are encouraged to see that Ofsted is continuing to acknowledge that progress is being made, in this case with services we offer to young people leaving care and in long term care. As a trust we benefit from having one focus – that of improving outcomes for our children, young people and families. We acknowledge there is still work to do, but we are seeing tangible evidence of improvements after every Ofsted visit and I want to thank our staff for their continued hard work.”