Thursday 18 November 2010

Worcestershire County Council OftSted

A Statement from

Gail Quinton

Director of Children's Services

"An Announced Inspection of the Safeguarding Services and Looked After Children Services provided by Worcester Children's Services and partners took place in October. The findings of this inspection, which was carried out by Ofsted from October 4 to 15, have now been published. Go to www.wcvys.co.uk/news for a copy.

Inspectors have graded our overall effectiveness for safeguarding services as inadequate and capacity for improvement as adequate, with five immediate areas for improvement. In the area of services for looked after children, we have been graded as adequate, with capacity for improvement also being rated adequate.

The publication of these inspection findings follow on from Ofsted's unannounced inspection of our contact, referral and assessment arrangements, which took place on July 6 and 7 this year.

Ensuring our most vulnerable children are protected and remain protected is our highest priority. We recognise the purpose of these inspections to continuously drive improvement and are already working on making the immediate and short-term improvements and working in the right direction towards effectively achieving the long-term actions.

The inspectors recognised that we have taken immediate action since the unannounced inspection in July and that while some of our changes are at an early stage, they are the right steps and that we do have the capacity to improve.

For more information, please contact Siobhan Williams, Head of Safeguarding and Services to Children and Young People."

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