The context

First, a few disclaimers. This chapter does not aim to describe the path to the achievement of excellence or an outstanding service, neither is it a critique of recent or current Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) regimes and methodologies. It does not offer a road map for those authorities already in intervention – although it is hoped that it may be of assistance to them and indeed to those who feel themselves to be coasting and those waiting for Ofsted and maybe wondering whether they are heading for a fall. Nor is it a blueprint for the design of a social care service for children and their families: we are aware that many authorities are successfully working on this and some are offering very useful models for others to learn from and develop. We make no reference to those developments other than by implication and, as the reader will find, we support models and improvement activities that put good social work centre stage in service development.

Rather, this chapter offers an outline of those areas of any children's system or service that must be addressed if it is to be considered ‘safe’. It is based on our combined experience (and that of others working in similar circumstances – the world of turnaround interims in local authority child protection services is small) in several different authorities which have fallen foul of an inspection and been judged inadequate. It sets out a number of organisational characteristics we consider to be key to the provision of at least safe services for children. Weaknesses in these areas were part of our inheritance when we moved to those authorities and needed to be addressed in order to help move those authorities forward.

Necessarily, we set out these areas in a somewhat linear manner. Not only has each area to be attended to and brought in to good order, what is overwhelmingly important is that the interrelationship between each and every one is worked on. If leadership, learning and development, performance management and supervision, and other key areas of service improvement are not all working together and influencing each other, the service response to the complexity of the task will never be what it needs to be or as good as it can be.