Devon children's services set for government intervention

The government could intervene in Devon's services for children with special educational needs and disabilities due to long-term failings.

Ofsted identified significant problems in the county in 2018 and found improvements were still too slow in 2022.

The Department for Education (DfE) has drafted an "improvement notice".

The council said it was taking action and "doing everything it can" to improve.

The notice means Devon County Council will have to regularly report to ministers, and the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) would need to report to NHS England.

Children's services in Devon have had an overall rating of "inadequate" since 2020, meaning they are at risk of being stripped from the council if they do not improve.

DfE minister Will Quince said in a letter on 29 July he was "very disappointed to hear that Devon has failed to make sufficient progress in any of the four areas of significant weaknesses identified during an initial inspection in December 2018".

These were with regard to how child protection plans were done, and challenges with recruitment and retention of social workers.

He said he was particularly concerned to find in June 2022 that there were 1,600 delayed annual reviews still outstanding.

He added communication "remained poor" and "in many cases communication had got worse".

The ongoing review relates to services run by both the council and the NHS - with Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) both monitoring the situation.

A spokesperson for Devon County Council said the authority was working with the NHS and DfE on what needed to be done to improve services.

Andrew Leadbetter, cabinet member for children's services and schools said: "We are sorry about this. Sorry isn't good enough because these are vulnerable children and we're doing everything possible to help them."

He added: "We are responding really strongly with this. We are recruiting, putting new systems in place, working with our parents, we're doing everything we can to improve this."

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