Alison Jeffery, director of children and families’ services at Portsmouth council, talks to Community Care about the ‘good’ judgment the service recently received from Ofsted.
The council was praised by Ofsted particularly for its “impressive” quality assurance and its learning and development environment. Jeffery explains how the service implemented these measures, including how it ensures a strong supportive learning environment for its staff, its commitment to restorative practice, bow it has embedded performance management and how it plans to broaden the ranges and approaches social workers can apply.
The full list of questions, posed by Community Care associate editor Sarah Dennis, is:
1)What do you think Portsmouth council has done particularly well since the previous inspection in 2014. Was this reflected in Ofsted’s findings?
2)How was the outcome of the inspection communicated to staff, and how does the senior leadership team keep in touch with frontline staff in general?
3)Reflecting on the inspection process itself, how was this managed by the teams, and what were your perceptions of it?
4)How important has the political and financial support of children’s services from the local authority been and what has this enabled?
5)Turning on to the observations in the report itself, how has the leadership team stabilised the workforce, and how does it manage the recruitment and deployment of agency staff in terms of managing caseloads and continuity?
6)Can we get an example of the direct work that is identified as a strength by inspectors - in terms of how a social worker(s)’ practice has directly helped a family?
7)How does the council apply quality assurance. What is the ‘impressive’ performance framework that has been put in place and where do you think have been the various areas of practice that have improved that Ofsted refers to?
8)Ofsted highlighted the training and development opportunities for staff. How has Portsmouth incorporated and invested in this and what have been the benefits?
9)The way the council approaches permanence has been identified as a strength. How has this been developed?
10)What’s next for Portsmouth and what steps is the service taking to continue performance?