Children's services in Gateshead praised
Families across Gateshead are benefitting from sensitive, innovative child-centred help and highly-skilled and caring social workers according to Ofsted.
The outcomes of the visit which took place in September highlighted:
Gateshead has highly-skilled, committed and caring social workers;
Doing the right thing to help children and their families is an ethos embedded across the service;
Professional partnerships work together effectively to protect children from harm;
Two areas for improvement are the quality and impact of supervision, including contingency planning for children in need, and the routine inclusion of the views of children/families in audits.
Councillor Gary Haley, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said "We want all of our children and families to have the opportunity to thrive and I'm very proud of the team we have in children's services who continue to work incredibly hard to support families across the borough.
"It's credit to the team that, despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic, they have not only continued to provide crucial support to our most vulnerable families but they have also introduced new initiatives such as our social workers in school team, an enhanced service for children at risk of coming into care and our brand new kinship care team which supports more children being cared for by relatives."
The focused visit to Gateshead's children's services evaluated the help and protection given to vulnerable families by the integrated referral team and the assessment and intervention team.
Caroline O'Neill, Strategic Director of Children, Adults and Families, said "This is a real testament to the hard work and dedication shown by our staff in their everyday work. I'm extremely pleased their efforts have been recognised and praised by the Ofsted inspection team.
"We are already working hard to improve the two areas identified and have plans in place to ensure we continue to build on our successes."
Families across Gateshead are benefitting from sensitive, innovative child-centred help and highly-skilled and caring social workers according to Ofsted.
The outcomes of the visit which took place in September highlighted:
Gateshead has highly-skilled, committed and caring social workers;
Doing the right thing to help children and their families is an ethos embedded across the service;
Professional partnerships work together effectively to protect children from harm;
Two areas for improvement are the quality and impact of supervision, including contingency planning for children in need, and the routine inclusion of the views of children/families in audits.
Councillor Gary Haley, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said "We want all of our children and families to have the opportunity to thrive and I'm very proud of the team we have in children's services who continue to work incredibly hard to support families across the borough.
"It's credit to the team that, despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic, they have not only continued to provide crucial support to our most vulnerable families but they have also introduced new initiatives such as our social workers in school team, an enhanced service for children at risk of coming into care and our brand new kinship care team which supports more children being cared for by relatives."
The focused visit to Gateshead's children's services evaluated the help and protection given to vulnerable families by the integrated referral team and the assessment and intervention team.
Caroline O'Neill, Strategic Director of Children, Adults and Families, said "This is a real testament to the hard work and dedication shown by our staff in their everyday work. I'm extremely pleased their efforts have been recognised and praised by the Ofsted inspection team.
"We are already working hard to improve the two areas identified and have plans in place to ensure we continue to build on our successes."
