The Department for Education has issued a Notice of Improvement to Wiltshire Council due to its “poor performance in safeguarding children and young people and adoption services.”
The Notice which is published on the Department of Communities and Local Government website, follows the report in April 2012 by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission which judged the overall effectiveness of Wiltshire’s safeguarding services to be “inadequate”.
The Council have taken urgent steps to put matters right and are soon to commission their own independent inquiry into the effectiveness of their new measures. As required, they have set up an Improvement Board which the Notice says should have an independent chair and establish a ‘package of support’ which includes peer mentoring and support for the Lead Member for Children’s Services.
The Notice lays down a timetable for reports direct to Ministers by the chair of the Improvement Board and that an initial review of progress will be held by the Department for Education this December. There will be a further Departmental review in June 2013 and a final review in December 2013 – by which time “all performance indicators and milestones” have to be met.
The full text of the Notice can be found here.
