East Riding social workers “enthusiastic and motivated”, say Ofsted inspectors following fourth visit since 2019

Inspectors found the “pace of improvement” had accelerated since their last focused visit inspection in March, the fourth such visit since children’s safeguarding and support services were rated as inadequate during an inspection in 2019.

Inspectors found a “determined and stable” leadership team “know their services extremely well” and are clear where improvements have been made and there is a “realistic” plan in place to improve consistency of social work practice.

Inspectors also recognised that the improvement journey has strong and visible support from the council’s corporate management team, elected members, partners and external peer support while they added that “additional investment is enabling the evolving infrastructure and system changes to drive the development work”.

Councillor Victoria Aitken, portfolio holder for children and young people’s education, health and wellbeing at East Riding of Yorkshire Council, said: “This is the fourth focused visit by Ofsted and again the report highlights the improvements children’s safeguarding and support services are continuing to make.

“One of the key strengths of the senior leadership team throughout this monitoring process is that they know their service well and that has been recognised by Ofsted too.

“I would also like to acknowledge all our social care staff and their managers. They have continued to work untiringly through a very difficult period to achieve the improvements we are now seeing.

“But while this letter is very positive and shows how far the service area has improved since 2019, we are not complacent, there is always further work to do to ensure we continue to deliver good services.”