Must know: The role of a council leader in improving outcomes for children

This guide, specifically developed for the council leader, has been shaped by current and former leaders, lead members and chief executives with experience of children’s services improvement. 

It will explore your role, working with your lead member for children’s services (LMCS), chief executive (CE) and director of children’s services (DCS), in leading one of the most sensitive, expensive and high-risk areas of local government. 

Ensuring local areas and services meet the needs of children and families is arguably one of the most important functions of local government. 

When things are working well, it can be an area that doesn’t draw the political or corporate attention of council leadership, but if there are issues these can escalate and unravel quickly - potentially leading to an Ofsted failure or, worse still, an avoidable tragedy. As leader you will be managing competing priorities and demands for resources but identifying and addressing issues in children’s services early is key. The financial and reputational implications of a failure in children’s services would likely be council-wide and significant.

In the discharge of their statutory responsibilities, top tier and unitary councils are focused on keeping children safe and stepping in to offer support or look after them when they can’t be cared for safely at home. They also have statutory duties to support educational excellence for all children and young people in their area, an important part of which is support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and preparing these young people for adulthood, which can be a significant financial pressure for many areas. 

As leader you should therefore have an understanding of the conditions for children’s services success and improvement, and your role in enabling them. This will mean advocating for effective place-based prioritisation of children’s needs through partnership structures, and ensuring that the health and wellbeing needs of children and young people, including those with SEND, are central to local planning through the Integrated Care System structures. Together with your CE you should maintain line of sight to services for children and families and be mindful that problems can be an early indicator of wider corporate and leadership issues within the organisation. 

This guide is intended as a summary for council leaders to support you in navigating your role to ensure that children and young people in your area are safe, heard and have their needs met.

All upper tier and unitary authorities with responsibility for education and children’s social care must appoint a DCS with professional responsibility for children’s services and designate a lead member with political responsibility for children’s services (LMCS) as set out in the Children Act 2004. They hold direct local accountability for the effectiveness, availability and value for money of the local authority children’s services, particularly education and children’s social care, with the DCS holding professional responsibility and the LMCS holding political responsibility. The LMCS is the only role for elected members that’s defined in legislation and requires careful working with partners and across the council. It is therefore a key appointment for your Cabinet. 

Together with the DCS, the LMCS, and the CE, the leader has a key leadership role across the council and through working with other local agencies to improve outcomes for children and young people. This strategic ‘quartet’ of political and officer leadership is fundamental to effectiveness and sustained improvement, and to work well it is essential that is has a shared vision, common value base and agreed set of objectives. The quartet must establish a system of delegated responsibility and performance reporting in order to fulfil their, and the council’s obligations. This should recognise the role that the CE and Leader have in providing oversight, whilst not intervening in the day-to-day management of children’s services. 

It is worth noting that amongst a network of formal meetings and boards, the quartet can be a forum for a different type of discussion that can help to ensure that political and corporate leadership around children’s services, including education and SEND, is strong and united. 

Councillor Abi Brown, Chair, LGA Improvement and Innovation Board and former Leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council 2019-2023

When appointing a LMCS, the council is delegating political responsibility for the leadership, strategy and effectiveness of all children’s services – social care, education, SEND and youth offending services. The LMCS is also democratically accountable to communities and has a key role in defining the local vision and setting political priorities for children’s services within the broader political context of the council. It is a demanding role requiring someone with the time, energy and determination to be a committed champion for children, and the ability to quickly develop the knowledge and insight needed to drive improvement. You may want to consider making the appointment with a view to the same person staying in the position for a full term of office. You should also be mindful of any potential or perceived conflict of interest.

Over time the effectiveness of any council children’s service will probably turn on the effectiveness of the DCS. Most post holders would agree the job is as rewarding as it is challenging, but it remains one of the hardest chief officer roles to fill and retain. Annual turnover nationally is around 30 per cent. While we know it is likely to take over three years to sustainably improve children’s services, the average length of tenure is less than that. In some places considerably so. 

Leaders should have a key role, together with the CE, in appointing the DCS and for leading the political and organisational culture that will support them to perform their role effectively. It should go without saying that any DCS appointment decision should be taken with great care, utilising good professional, possibly external, advice and with a full and verifiable assessment of the candidate’s background. That should include an awareness of the candidate’s track record in Ofsted inspection. The same considerations and due diligence should be applied to interim appointments. 

It is permissible for councils to incorporate the DCS role with other duties if this does not weaken or dilute the focus on outcomes for children and young people. In the past this was mostly seen when the statutory DCS and Director of Adults services role was performed by one person as a ‘twin-hatter’. However, increasing demands of these roles, including through inspections of both services, has made this a rarer occurrence. It is a statutory requirement that a ‘test of assurance’ is undertaken if a DCS is given any additional roles and responsibilities. 

The Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) inspection framework looks at leadership of children’s services including how well leaders are grasping issues and building capacity for improvement where there are signs of deterioration in services. Ofsted condense their analysis into three questions – which are useful for you to have in mind as part of your role in the ‘strategic quartet’. 

• What do you know about the quality and impact of social work practice with children and families in your authority? 
• How do you know it? 
• What are your plans to maintain or improve practice? 

These questions are part of an annual conversation discussion between the council and Ofsted with forms part of the ILACS framework, together with the council’s annual self-evaluation.

Leaders should also be aware that Ofsted do from time to time undertake a focused visit of a council which is part of the ILACS framework. Joint Targeted Area Inspections (JTAIs) which also cover partners and involve multiple inspectorates, are also part of the inspection landscape for children’s services. Youth Justice Services are inspected by HMI Probation and look at the arrangements for organisational delivery of the service, the quality of work done with children sentenced by the courts, and the quality of out-of-court work.

SEND and AP is subject to a separate Ofsted/CQC inspection with the Integrated Care Board (ICB) under the SEND Area Inspection Framework which focuses on how effective the SEND and AP area partnership is in delivering outcomes for children and their families. Ofsted and CQC also undertake thematic visits to a small number of areas each year to investigate a particular aspect of the SEND system in depth. 

Leaders should have an understanding of SEND and AP as covered by the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEND Code of Practice. This requires the views of children, and their families are taken into account, keeping under review their education and care provision, as well as preparing for adulthood and publishing a local offer. You should also be aware of the strength and quality of your partnership with your ICB and their effectiveness as a joint statutory partner around children’s services, SEND, children’s health and wellbeing, and joint commissioner of services. 

In March 2023 the government published the SEND and AP Improvement Plan. There will be new national requirements around reporting data and the establishment of a dashboard so data around local area performance can be published and compared. 

Consequences of an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted judgement 

The judgement of Ofsted on a council’s children’s services has the capacity to have the most profound impact on children’s services and the wider council and partnership. Councils with an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted judgement need to redirect a huge amount of resource and focus to deliver improvement at pace, all under a media and government spotlight. 

Analysis has shown a correlation between local authorities that have an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted judgement and those with high proportions of agency staff and vacancy rates. There are differing views on the cause of the correlation – do councils that do not create the conditions for good social work practice experience higher workforce instability contributing to poor Ofsted outcomes, or do the Ofsted outcomes in part contribute to the workforce instability? It is likely to be a combination, with Ofsted ratings exacerbating existing issues, but low turnover of staff will support social workers to build relationships with children and families. You should ensure that your LMCS has opportunities to update you on agency rates, vacancy rates, and sickness amongst your children’s services workforce, as these can be signatures of risk. Your LMCS should understand the profile and narrative for children’s services caseloads and be alert to changes that could reflect systemic issues.  

Local authorities have also found that an Inadequate Ofsted judgement (or a judgement of ‘systemic failings’ for the Area SEND inspection) has affected their ability to recruit and retain experienced staff. This in turn can increase agency staffing spend, just at a time that stability in the workforce and investment in services is most critical to support rapid improvement.

Key questions for leaders:

• Is there a local narrative which helps members better understand how and why children’s services is the way it is. For example rationale for the numbers and proportions of children in care? This can vary substantially within and between authorities, represent the most significant cost pressure and tell you a lot about how services are organised and delivered. 
• Is there volatility and variations in key data indicators? For example child protection activity which may signal a deterioration of management grip on the service.
• How strong is your local area partnership around SEND and AP – is there clarity on what is working well and not working well, and the priorities for improvement? Would local parents and carers recognise these priorities?

By staying in touch with your neighbours and the wider region, your council will be able to share concerns, access support and develop regional programmes to support children’s services improvement. 

The Regional Improvement and Innovation Alliances (RIIA) lead various strands of children’s services sector-led improvement activity and data benchmarking at a regional level. They bring together DCSs, CEs, LMCSs and other senior leaders in both local authorities and trusts to challenge and support one another to improve outcomes for children and young people.

RIIAs support the development of relationships across council borders, contribute to the regional ‘voice’ on children’s services issues, and provide access to improvement support. Find out who Chairs the RIIA in your region and satisfy yourself that the key people in your authority are engaged. You may find it useful to use the regional data sets held by the RIIA to contextualise your children’s services data.

The system of political assurance and accountability around children’s services should support children’s services improvement, providing robust challenge, oversight, scrutiny and support.

Ofsted state that leaders, including elected members, should have a comprehensive and current knowledge of what is happening at the ‘front line’ and how well children and young people are helped, cared for and protected. This can be supported through the engagement of members in robust Scrutiny and Corporate Parenting panel arrangements, and through achievements, progress and views of children in care and care leavers being shared at full council meetings.

The Ofsted/CQC Area SEND Inspection will judge the effectiveness of the local area partnership’s SEND arrangements and will evaluate how the local area partners work together to plan, evaluate and develop the SEND system. You should seek assurance from your LMCS that the governance arrangements for SEND are clear, including links through to the Health and Wellbeing Board, ICB other partnership boards and scrutiny. You may want to consider having a Strategic Local Area SEND and AP partnership that owns and drives this work.

When children come into the care of the local authority, the local authority takes on the role of ‘corporate parent’. Being a corporate parent means doing everything you can for every child in the council’s care and every care leaver, to give them the opportunities that other children get.

As leader you will want to understand what life is like for children in your community and be assured that their views and aspirations, and those of parents and carers, are reflected in policy making and service delivery. Ofsted will also look at how children’s voices are heard, captured and acted upon. 

All leaders should have plans in place to deal responsively with any high-profile cases, an Ofsted judgement or issues that affect children and young people and their safety within the community. If your children’s services are in the spotlight, you will need to be clear on your role and that of your strategic quartet in communicating key messages to communities, partners, staff and businesses. 

In times of crisis, it is often the leader, rather than LMCS that will be at the front of the reputational, organisational, emotional and financial fall out, and lead internal and external communications messages.

Your communications team should be brought into all discussions from the beginning so they can support you with honest, impartial advice about the issues and its possible implications. If a case is likely to attract significant media attention, including national interest, you are likely to know about this several weeks in advance and should be ready to respond. The LGA can also offer support in times of crisis, including with communications and media management. This could include peer support, media relations support, and connections to councils that have been through similar issues. 

Children’s services present one of the biggest reputational and financial risks to a council if things go wrong. As such children’s services financial issues need to be a key consideration within a council’s corporate financial framework.

Alongside the general challenges of running children’s services it is widely understood and accepted that children’s social care and SEND funding pressures compounded by increased need, cost and demand, represent one of the most pressing local government financial concerns at present. The key issue for leaders working with the CE is to ensure that children’s services spending is sustainable in both service as well as financial terms. Financial volatility within the service may be an indicator of a loss of management grip, but such are the current pressures that is not a given. Leaders should satisfy themselves as to why budget variances are arising, positive or negative. In particular, ensure you are updated on the High Needs Block of the Dedicated Schools Grant. 

It is well evidenced that service failure is hugely expensive, as well as widely damaging to your authority. The cost of recovery from failure will certainly outweigh the cost of avoidance of failure, and there is a clear role for preventative services in getting support to children and families as early as possible before their needs escalate.

The Executive members for Finance and Children’s Services should both understand children’s services finance, provide challenge in terms of budget setting and monitoring, and be able to respond to matters as part of the democratic process.

Key questions for leaders:

• Is your budget aligned to your vision for children’s services? 
• Has the council appropriately invested and prioritised resources for vulnerable children?
• Is there active involvement and attendance by all senior leaders and politicians at all corporate boards and committees in which key decisions for children are made?
• Is there a political commitment to supporting children’s services and an understanding that addressing the needs of young people at an early age can reduce costs for other departments?
• Are health partners making appropriate contributions to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND?

With thanks to all of the political and corporate leaders whose contributions have informed the development of this resource.

Councillor Louise Gittins, Chair, LGA Children and Young People Board and Leader, Cheshire West and Chester; Councillor Grace Williams, Leader, London Borough of Waltham Forest; Councillor Laura Mayes, Deputy Leader, Wiltshire County Council; Councillor Gillian Ford, Deputy Leader, London Borough of Havering; Councillor Abi Brown, Chair, LGA Improvement and Innovation Board and former Leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council 2019-2023; Councillor Cllr Steve Darling, Leader, Liberal Democrat Group and former Leader of Torbay Council 2019-2023; Philip Simpkins, LGA Children’s Improvement Adviser and former Chief Executive at Bedford Borough Council.