Reflection not Reaction Necessary re New Ofsted Dataset re Constituency Inspection Outcomes

A Government update by its agency Ofsted came on the day after term finished for many schools and on one of the busiest travel days of the year. People switching off work mode and into holiday mode. Others caring for children now in one of the busiest times of the year with little or no time for strategic thinking, discussion, development, or availability.

It’s an innocuously titled update, ‘Inspection outcomes in each parliamentary constituency’ ( Inspection outcomes in each parliamentary constituency) containing ‘data on the most recent inspection outcomes for providers in the new parliamentary constituencies introduced in July 2024.’ Not highlighting itself as holiday reading.

Yet the timing, content and context bring 2 important questions, and, ironically, one often asked by Ofsted social care leads: Why this? Why now?

There is an easily constructed list of plausible replies from Ofsted, loosely summarised as, tidying up, always programmed for this date, helping a new government understand.

Such updates would usually have been signalled at the Ofsted National Consultative Forum. Sector leads are always only an email away for dissemination.

It is too soon for the new Government to have requested this treatment of the data. We can assume it has been a long time coming and part of the last government’s work.

That was then and this is now a time of promised change. In the first 100 days the new government might get best results by getting out and meeting people being cared for and doing the caring.

These last weeks’ Sir Martin Narey’s name has been mentioned often for doing just this to underpin his reports in a way Josh MacAllister’s Care Review did not.

The learning for the government is there are a lot of other perspectives to still to be gleaned.

With reflection since publication the Care Review was paradoxically too extensive and wide to be intensive, deep, and insightful, as a result it is subject to recording various ‘interested party’ lobbies. If other reports have been an album of snapshots with some selected achievable recommendations (read Narey again for an exemplar), the Care Review was a landscape panning aide memoire.

To consider content and context of the dataset is to recognise it fits with the recent continuation of a narrative by Ofsted, LGA, ADCS, DfE about the ‘wrong homes in wrong places ‘ and concentration in some areas, 25% of homes in NW region.

This nexus of views concentrates on supply, a focus on others, rather than demand, their own work, and not at all on capacity, everyone’s concern, being how to get to the right child in the right homes in the right place.

Another strategy for specialist and residential child care is necessary and possible. It is not to be found in decommissioning and then procuring what we need as what we need does not exist or does not where we need it to be. What is needed is development thinking. This is not in the Care Review. Nor is it in the implicit downsizing of residential solutions by increasing fostering. Evidence shows these meet different needs. Might it be we need more of everything and especially what we do not have?

Before government, local or national, react to this new dataset magnification some reflection is necessary. The dataset ought not to take our gaze but to inspire our curiosity. The future that has been given is not the one to take, but the one we will make.

The dataset is raw data. What it does not show is the necessary wider deeper intelligence about the homes or placements.

In this way, taken on its own, it is the wrong data. It is all we have, but it tells us little about the homes or children. It is another snapshot that supports a series of policy propositions rather than a strategy.

To make contextual sense of the update we need further data of needs of children; specialism of the home, reason for placement, matching needs and provision, outcomes of placement not of inspection (which is what the update collates). Unless we have that granular detail there is potential for someone to react seeking a performative headline.

If we have the granular detail we can begin planning, truly commissioning needs-led provision rather than procurement from what is offered.

The update is another example of those outside and above the sector acting on it, and those within and below excluded from any thinking about a new future.

Government, researchers, providers is one interest group. Practitioners and children are another interested group and, particularly the former, are kept away from any thinking about thinking.

Additionally, over the past few years experts with decades of experience still within the sector have been steadily and systematically excluded from working to support government and its agencies as compliance has been valued over creativity and challenge.

There has been talk about a new approach to data collection. There have been a few tweaks to the annual return. This is offset by other losses like the ceasing of children’s care unit costs data analysis by Personal Social Services Research Unit, Kent University.

However, that is for the future. Back to pondering, ‘Why this Why now?’ What could we expect more immediately?

Here is a plausible contention. The update could be preparation for a policy ‘nudge’. How? In its early days the Labour government stated they will look to change national policy documents rather than the detail of regulations. Over the years Ofsted have changed their interpretation of policy to suit governmental desires. A policy interpretation is quicker, and it keeps control of the narrative and levers.

Such a dataset of local/regional numbers could be framed to bolster a new interpretation of the Sufficiency duty. For example, a new duty could determine no out of region placements with a dataset advising there is a numerical sufficiency. Mot homes over the past 4 years have been termed ‘mainstream’, that is more of the same. Need a specialist home and not available in the region? The policy interpretation response might be ‘Open them.’

Evidence and experience inform us that to open a specialist home has taken a longer than shorter time. However, we have created a new paucity of expertise and experience for meeting specialist needs, an insufficiency. Such expertise will take time to be recovered. A leadership cohort then needs to be created and supported across care, health, psychology, psychiatry, and education. Then the workforce needs to be carefully recruited and trained thoroughly, experience is that the workforce development takes 6 months to provide a resilient practice base. In all this is programmatic work over 5 years. A robust learning cycle cannot be quicker.

We want the ‘right’ homes. We must invest in doing it the ‘right’ way.

The urgent need that this dataset content and context reveals is the precondition to create a reflective rather than reactive space for policy and practice development.