By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
More than £600,000 from Nottingham City Council’s reserves will be spent on hiring a number of new employees to help improve its failing children’s services.
Children’s services at the Labour-run authority were rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted inspectors in September and a formal ‘improvement notice’ was issued by the Government a month later.
The services must be provided by the council by law and, should the council fail to improve, Government commissioners may be sent in to take over the service.
The employment of more staff comes after the council also enlisted the help of consultants at a cost of £6.5m.
Newton Europe, a specialist in operational improvement based in Oxfordshire, has been signed up to help deliver an improvement programme in its children’s services.
Council delegated decision documents, which detail the new job roles, say: “From the feedback already received it is clear that whilst some progress has been made against previous priority actions, this progress has been too slow, and some other areas have deteriorated.
“This means that children in Nottingham city do not yet receive a consistently good service and for some children risk of harm is not recognised quickly enough.
“The inspection feedback was clear that the scale of required improvements remains substantial, and the pace of change needs to quicken for all areas of the service to provide safe and consistently good services for children.
“A full improvement plan needs to be developed. It is in early stages and it is likely that this will identify areas that we need to deliver services differently and detailed plans to respond will be developed.
“There are some specific areas where it is known that we need to bring some additional staffing to bring immediate improvements.”
As such the council will be employing one ‘service manager’, two ‘missing from home advocates’, one ‘missing from home and exploitation lead manager’, one ‘inspection and improvement manager’, four full-time ‘personal advisors’ and one who will work part-time.
Should the council fail to improve quickly it says it runs the risk of making children in the city “wait too long for the help that they need”.
Some children will also be at risk of harm in that time and the council’s reputation will be tarnished.
The total value of the job roles is £634,723, covering a period of 18 months between 2022/23 and 2023/24.
Documents reveal the council does not have adequate finances to support the new roles, with the service manager role salary coming in at more than £51,000, for example.
The council is therefore having to seek temporary funding from its Financial Resilience Reserve, which currently has £8.971m.
“It is expected that Ofsted will move to a monitoring visit regime which will involve the equivalent of focused visits or mini inspections quarterly, with a further full inspection in 2 to 3 years,” the council adds.
“The Department for Education (DfE) will consider the outcome of the Ofsted inspection report when published and will consider the need for intervention, making recommendations to the Secretary of State through the Minister of State on what intervention is appropriate and what support should be deployed.
“The DfE will consider whether to appoint a DfE advisor or commissioner to ensure that the improvement journey is supported and progressed.”
