Bradford children's services rated inadequate for second time

Children in Bradford have been left at risk of harm due to "serious failures" across the city's children's services, inspectors have said.

Ofsted rated the service "inadequate" for the second time since 2018 saying "the experience... of many children" had declined since then.

It comes after a review of Bradford children's services in the wake of toddler Star Hobson's murder in 2020.

Senior leaders said they accepted the findings and children "deserve better".

In a report published after the latest inspection in November and December 2022, Ofsted found "widespread and serious failures" across all service areas.

"This leaves children at risk of harm, leaves some children in situations of continued harm, and, for many children in care, unnecessary and prolonged delays in achieving permanence," it said.

Too many children experienced drift and delay in having their needs identified and addressed and high staff turnover meant "too many children" experienced multiple changes of social worker, it added.

Pressures on social workers to move children's cases on meant that, for some children, statutory interventions ended without assessments being updated, and often with "overly optimistic assessments about parental capacity to change", inspectors said.

The department is due to be taken over by a Children's Trust in April, after years of poor performance and being rated "inadequate" by Ofsted in 2018.

Bradford Council was told it would be stripped of control of its children's services in January 2022 in the wake of the murder of 16-month-old Star Hobson by her mother's partner.

Star Hobson suffered "catastrophic" injuries at the hands of Savannah Brockhill, her mother Frankie Smith's "violent-tempered" girlfriend.

The latest Ofsted report said inspectors had also conducted seven monitoring visits since the previous inadequate judgement in 2018.

Inspectors said while some progress had been achieved, the pace of improvements had been "very slow".

Responding to the findings, Marium Haque, Director of Children's Services, who was given the role on a permanent basis earlier this month, said: "We know that children and families deserve better.

"We have been very open with Ofsted about the challenges that our children's social care services face both in terms of the improvements we have made and the areas we continue to work on.

"We recognise what this report says about the pace of improvement and we have already taken steps to bring about changes," she said.

Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said she fully accepted Ofsted's findings.

"It is our priority that children get the best services," she said, adding the authority had invested "substantially in children's services" in an effort to speed up the pace of improvement.

The report also found that leaders at the council continued to lack understanding of the scale of improvement required and what actions and resources were needed.

Keighley MP Robbie Moore said he found this "incredibly worrying".

"It was back in 2018 when Ofsted first came in and rated the council as being completely inadequate," he said.

"We have seen no improvement [since then], and in fact a decline."

He said it showed there were serious failings at a senior level, including by the chief executive Kersten England and Ms Hinchcliffe.

Mr Moore called for them both to resign with immediate effect.

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