Exploring the impact of Ofsted inspections on performance in children’s social care

Monitoring a Fragile Child Protection System: a Longitudinal Local Area Ecological Analysis of the Inequalities Impact of Children’s Services Inspections on Statutory Child Welfare Interventions in England

“…More recently, Hood and Goldacre analysed trends in median local authority child welfare intervention rates, centred on a notable inspection year. The discontinuity they observed was borne out by an interrupted time series analysis, confirming the hypothesised rise in child-in-need and child protection interventions during an inspection year, particularly for local authorities judged inadequate – though again, no evidence of a spike for Children Looked After (Hood and Goldacre, 2021). In a survey of Directors of Children’s Services, the question of the flexibility of thresholds for care entry divided respondents (All Party Parliamentary Group for Children, 2018).…”

“…Four local authorities were excluded from our analyses. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, and Dorset were excluded due to boundary changes that could not be reconciled across years; the City of London and the Isles of Scilly were excluded due to their small population size – as frequent extreme outliers, they are commonly excluded from local area-level analyses of child welfare interventions (Hood and Goldacre, 2021; National Audit Office, 2016).…”

A review of the relationship between poverty and child abuse and neglect: Insights from scoping reviews, systematic reviews and meta‐analyses

“…There is also not a simple binary divide between those in poverty and those not in poverty (Bywaters et al, 2020; Hood & Goldacre, 2021). Across the social continuum, having greater financial resources allows parents to buy goods and services which enable children to thrive and succeed in ways which often depend on the distribution of resources within societies.…”

Can Children's Participation Be Promoted From the Outside?

“…Inspections tend to be more legalistic but vary in terms of stressing control or support, and the standards used to evaluate care can be more or less distinct (Pålsson, 2018;Hämberg, 2013). The research overall shows difficulties elaborating precise standards for care quality and also to actually impact core care aspects (e.g., the relationships between children and foster parents/staff and client outcomes) (Munro, 2011;Pålsson, 2018;Rutz et al, 2016;Hood & Goldacre, 2021). Limited knowledge is available about monitoring and children's participation; however, Brady et al (2019), from an Irish context, show that inspections of residential care use standards for formal participation (e.g., house-meetings) and that children in foster care have fewer provisions than children in residential care regarding access to formal complaint possibilities.…”

“…Monitoring can be seen against the background of historical failures to secure children's well-being (Sköld & Markkola, 2020), misgivings regarding the quality of care, as well as the need to steer outsourced child welfare services (Pålsson, 2018). As a consequence, many national child welfare systems have reinforced their monitoring systems and introduced more regulations, inspections, follow-up and formal complaint systems (e.g., Hood & Goldacre, 2021;Nordstoga & Støkken, 2011;Munro, 2011;Pålsson, 2018). In Sweden, children in out-of-home care are assigned an individual social worker who is responsible for monitoring the child's development while in care (including securing their participation) and there are more specific national policies and regulations with respect to local supervision (NBHW, 2020;Lundström et al, 2021).…”