BRADFORD Council’s Children’s Services are leaving "some children exposed to neglect for too long", including in domestic abuse situations, but improvements are being made.

Ofsted visited the local authority's children's services remotely on December 15, 2020.

Inspectors used video calls for discussions with local authority social workers, managers and leaders.

The education watchdog rated the local authority Inadequate back in 2018 and progress since then has been slow, according to this latest report.

This was because initially there was a failure to understand the breadth of the services’ inadequacy.

There were difficulties in employing people for the most senior posts and the current senior management was not fully in place until March 2020.

The report acknowledges that in their pursuit of recovery and improvement, leaders have also had to deal extra pressure and demands from the pandemic, particularly given Bradford's high infection rates in 2020.

Demand for children's social care in this time has remained high and more children were brought into care during the first wave of the pandemic, after leaders took action to address those at risk.

The report states: "Staff have provided good support for children in care and for foster carers during the pandemic.

"Social workers undertake appropriate assessments to determine safe arrangements to ensure that children can stay in touch with their families.

"Foster carers and their wider families have played a key role in ensuring stability of care for children and in supporting their family time and ongoing learning."

This is supported by good information-sharing between agencies in meetings about children.

But a "lack of robust planning" and "management oversight" mean that some children continue to experience "drift and delay".

The report states: "For example, some children are exposed to neglect for too long before action is taken to protect them.

“Similarly, over-optimism is resulting in a failure to take authoritative action soon enough in some cases where children are living in situations of domestic abuse.”

The service has also experienced significant challenges in matching children to new homes, particularly in emergency situations.

It means some children experience multiple moves and lack early stability.

The report states: "Social workers are not always considering wider family members as alternative carers early enough to prevent drift and delay before the child’s permanent home is confirmed."

But more children benefited from stable long-term homes during the first wave of the pandemic, with foster carers providing consistent care and support at a time of elevated anxiety for children.

Staff and leaders are aware of all of the problem areas and plans are in place to solve these issues urgently.

Mark Douglas, Bradford Council’s Director of Children’s Services, said: “We welcome the outcome of this visit which confirmed that we are seeing some improvements in key areas.

"We know there is much more to do in terms of improving our social care and we need to do this quickly, but the visit did establish that our new leadership team is aware of the areas for improvement we need to focus on and the challenge in respect of improving standards in social work practice, our leaving care service and the recruitment of social workers.

“Ofsted recognise the considerable challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has presented to us, but they also highlight how services have built on work of our specialist Covid-19 team and the strengthened partnerships this has helped us make so that we can improve services for pre-birth and vulnerable children.

"They also report that many areas, especially our services for disabled children, safeguarding and education are working well.

"The areas of concern that the inspection highlights are those that we had already identified as needing to show improvement.

"Ofsted recognise that the service is appropriately focused on raising the quality of management oversight for these areas.

"We are focused on improvement and doing this at pace."

Councillor Adrian Farley, Bradford Council’s Portfolio Holder for Children and Families, said: “Ofsted has recognised the scale of the challenge Covid-19 has brought to children’s social care and the positive steps the Council’s leadership has played in keeping children safe during this time.

"Improvements to practice are being made.

"It shows that the additional investment that the Council has put in to Children’s Services is making a difference during what is an extremely challenging time.

"It is also reassuring that some key areas such as the safeguarding hub is providing ‘an authoritative and confident response for children’.

“The letter highlights how strategic partnerships and collaborative working have been enhanced through the leadership of the Council’s Chief Executive and Director of Children’s Services.

"The safeguarding partnership has also helped to keep vulnerable children in focus during the pandemic.

"We have always said that to get all our children’s services to where we want them to be will take a number of years.

"We know there are still areas where delivery is not good enough for our children and where we need to see rapid improvement.

"The new leadership team is aware of these areas and will be prioritising them as a matter of urgency.”