Children’s services inspection communications guide

This guide provides practical information and case studies to help councils with communications surrounding inspections of local authorities’ children’s services.

Increasing need for specialist SEND and children’s social care provision alongside growing budget pressures puts these services in the spotlight and highlights the importance of supporting the children and young people at the heart of these services means honest, clear and transparent communications is vital.

Local authority children’s services are regularly inspected using the following frameworks:

• Inspection of local authority children’s services (Ofsted)
• SEND (Ofsted, CQC)
• Joint targeted are inspection (Ofsted, CQC, HMI Constabulary, HMI Probation)
• Youth justice (HMI Probation)

These inspections look at how well services for children and young people are being delivered, and in doing so will sometimes find that these services require improvement. When this is the case, the council and its partners, need to work together and quickly to improve these services so that children and young people are safe and achieve the best possible outcomes.

A poor communications response to an inspection can result in:

• A negative impact on children and young people in your area
• An impact on trust and reputation
• Your council facing an extra level of public scrutiny
• Challenging issues for all council employees

Communications is about more than the next day’s headlines and an ongoing external focus on issues raised in inspections can result in:

• Erosion of public trust
• Staff subjected to criticism and sometimes abuse (online and in-person)
• The issue becoming politically contentious
• Low morale
• Problems with recruitment and retention in children’s services
• Potential government intervention
• The council called before select committee/s

At the heart of all inspections are the children and young people and their families impacted by the service you provide. Their stories can be powerful and emotional and, whatever the outcome of an inspection, communication must be sensitive and, tailored for the right audiences. The tone and style of your communications is crucial – it needs to be personal, honest and avoid council jargon.

Engaging with parents and carers to share information about services available day-to-day on an ongoing basis is important. It provides the context they need ahead of the essential communications needed around the inspections themselves.

Councillors have a vital role in the communications response, demonstrating leadership, accountability and transparency. However, there needs to be clarity surrounding roles and responsibilities across the senior political and managerial leadership, with everyone agreed on who will speak publicly for the organisation (particularly in media relations work) with agreed key messages to support clear and consistent communications.

It is also important to demonstrate an understanding of the impact of inspections on colleagues, employees and of course on our children and young people.

Your communications team must be brought into all discussions, well before an inspection has taken place. They should be a key part of any proactive planning that takes place ahead of an inspection so they can develop and lead the delivery of the comms strategy before, during and after an inspection. This should apply regardless of the inspection results (positive or negative).

This will allow them to support you with honest, impartial advice about the issue and its possible implications. The comms team should work with colleagues across the organisation to develop a comprehensive plan – including key messages, audiences, timeline and channels.

Robust communications planning is crucial and should focus on the following areas.

Develop key messages/narrative for internal and external audiences, agreed by the political and managerial leadership.

Remember: The words you use matter. They need to convey a sense of responsibility, ownership and determination.

• You should make clear how seriously you take the issues and understand the impact they have on children and young people – especially on social media.
• Show empathy – provide context where appropriate – be honest and set out how things will improve

Use these messages consistently across all channels and conversations, adapting and updating when necessary.

If the inspection results are negative, it is important to avoid messages that could be seen as defensive, shifting blame or making excuses. 

Do not refuse to comment. In some cases, you may be limited in the detail of what you can say but honesty and transparency - and what you intend to do to put things right is crucial in building trust in your service and the work you are doing.

If the inspection results are positive, your communications should focus honestly on the learnings gleaned from the report. There is, however, a good opportunity for the council to showcase the positive impact it is having on parents, children and families. A proactive communications plan should set out clear roles for lead members and senior leaders as the council’s spokespeople. It should also outline how the council will support frontline staff, and where appropriate, children and parents to share positive messages and amplify human stories that are often unheard.

It is crucially important though to remember that a positive inspection result may not be felt by all residents, parents, teachers and children. It is therefore imperative that communications are honest about any shortcomings identified in the report and that the council demonstrates its commitment to improvement.

Local and regional media interest can vary – negative inspection outcomes, depending on the severity, may attract national media attention. You should be prepared for all levels of interest from various media channels.

It is also crucial to choose the right spokesperson, and you will need to think about who understands the issue you will be responding to best and who is confident about dealing with the issue. Councils often have two spokespeople (a senior officer and a senior member) on a major issue to pick up challenges around political and managerial leadership. Make sure they have support around media training. The LGA can provide information and support for this.

Media interest may be short-term, but the impact internally of a difficult inspection outcome will be ongoing and will be felt across the organisation. Make sure colleagues across the organisation hear your response to the inspection results before they see it in the media or on social media.

Briefings to children’s services staff are essential – consider different levels of briefings and ongoing support to staff depending on their closeness to the issue. Wider briefings across the organisation are also important to support a one council approach to getting things done and putting things right. Councillors of all parties and groups should be updated and kept informed.

Residents may be more likely to engage with your own channels than local media. Video is a more powerful channel than written statements from “a council spokesperson” and can be used across all your channels, supporting the consistent use of key messaging.

If the result is negative, be prepared for difficult comments and questions, especially on social media. Make sure you have a plan for when to engage and when not to. Brief your customer contact teams and provide them with the information they need to answer calls from the public. It is important, especially with regards to social media, to listen to online commentary (where you can) to track sentiment. You must ensure you go to the audience you want to reach, rather than expecting them to come to you.

It can also be helpful to consider which local groups, especially online, may be vocal but overall, not representative. As is covered in the next section, pre-emptive stakeholder mapping (including online groups, forums and website) can be a useful exercise.

Effective communication with partners and stakeholders is essential – they can be both powerful advocates and critics and it’s important they are fully briefed, understand the full context behind your communications and know what your plans are to address the issues raised through inspections. The role of MPs is key – they will expect to be briefed on your response before it is public.

Identifying who, how and when to engage with stakeholders can be done via stakeholder mapping. This could consist of building on current stakeholder mapping and institutional knowledge or might require starting from scratch. Before planning the council’s response towards inspection results, the council should map out a full list of stakeholders (internal and external) that would need to be considered as part of the council’s engagement before, following and/or throughout an inspection. One useful way of doing this is by plotting stakeholders along two axes: interest and influence. This is demonstrated below:

Once you have mapped your stakeholders, you can then put each stakeholder into one of these four categories which should help you identify how it is you should engage with them going forward:

You can read more about stakeholder mapping and public affairs in our Public affairs toolkit.

Although senior leaders in children’s services will lead on relationships with relevant national bodies, like Ofsted and the Department for Education, the communications team should develop a relationship with their communications teams and keep them updated about communications activity.

Some inspections may need a partnership response, so it’s important to work with partners to develop a shared approach to communications with consistent messaging and identified spokespeople for all agencies.

If any of the inspections result in stories surrounding individual children or young people, it is imperative that the families are properly and sensitively engaged.

A clear timeline is essential in communications planning. Map out a timeline of what is going to happen, when and who is responsible for delivering specific actions in the plan. The timeline should focus on three main phases - before, during and after the inspection.

6.1 Getting ready for an inspection (phase one)

There are no longer single word judgements in SEND inspection reports, so the narrative is crucial and should focus on what it is actually like to be a child or young person with SEND in your area. While one word judgements remain for ILACS inspections, Ofsted has announced that these too are being phased out.

Sharing the lived experience of children and young people will be a very important part of this narrative - Telford and Wrekin Council used anonymised video very effectively.

Ahead of an inspection make sure you have:

• Your agreed communications plan, including internal, external, social media and partner/stakeholder plans. This should also include your plans for the media: local, regional and national.
• Communications timeline for all three timing phases and schedule from before.
• A clear narrative and key messages about the inspection process, what will happen, what’s expected of colleagues and how people can find out more.
• Agreement on how you will update relevant colleagues during the inspection.
• An agreed approach around how you are managing (and who is managing) relationships with external stakeholders including within the SEND partnership/children’s social care provider.
• Ensure that staff are prepared for interviews, confident about talking to inspectors and can share details of the good work and success stories in line with appropriate safeguarding procedures. But do not coach staff to be anything other than open and honest.
• Plan for and communicate all the logistics of the inspection across the council to ensure that meetings are booked, diaries coordinated, inspectors are made welcome, have everything they need and a comfortable working environment.
• Prepare statements and content to cover different scenarios following the inspection. Regardless of whether you are expecting the result to be negative or positive, it is important to be prepared for all possible outcomes.

Understanding your audience and thinking about the best channels to communicate with them on, are vital aspects of comms planning ahead of an inspection. Telford and Wrekin used a variety of channels, including BBC coverage (online and area news), updates in the Leader’s newsletter and thank you notes to staff who had taken part in the preparations for and delivery of the inspection.

Your audiences will include:

• Children and young people
• Parent, carers and families
• Health partners
• Education settings
• Police
• Voluntary, faith and community sector partners
• Partnership boards such as Children’s Safeguarding Partnership, SEND Leadership Board, Health and Wellbeing Board and Health Watch
• SEND Partnership Board
• The Leader of the Council and Cabinet/Committee members
• Councillors
• MPs
• The wider public
• Local media
• National media

2 During an inspection (phase two)

It’s important not to speculate about the inspection while it’s in progress – either internally or externally. You may want to provide short, internal updates to key colleagues during the inspection, but this should just cover facts, such as where the inspection team has been. 

During the time the inspectors are on site it’s also helpful to make sure colleagues are thanked for their time and input into the process.

6.3 Responding to the inspection report (phase three)

Your response to the inspection should include a clear and focused commitment to improve services for children and young people. You need to be clear about what needs to change and how you will deliver that change. Be honest about the timeframes involved and what changes need to happen across your organisation (and with partners if relevant).

The third phase of your timeline should be clear about how you will communicate changes and improvements over time - ‘what difference have we made?’. These need to be tied into milestones (100 days post publication, six months on, a year on) and events that can demonstrate change which people internally and externally can recognise. Even if a result is positive, there still may be some negative findings and so this is still important to do.

Inspections can have a long-standing impact on the council itself – its staff and councillors, in the local area with partners and residents and sometimes nationally. Planning to communicate and engage with - and listen – to all your audiences over the long term is vital. Remaining honest, clear and realistic about the scale and pace of change you may need to deliver should underpin all your communications post-inspection.

Demonstrating that the council sees the inspection result as helpful in supporting change and continuous improvement of services is an important part of the response, whatever the outcome. Councils should thank staff for their contributions to the inspection process while understanding that staff may feel demotivated and demoralised if the inspection report is challenging. Communications – actively engaging with staff, clear and visible leadership is important to help staff to see the inspection outcome as a springboard for change and opportunity.

If the inspection results in the establishment of an improvement board, you should work with the independent chair and wider board to agree communications support for the work of the improvement board. This will mean staff, residents and partners know where to find out more about the board’s work and what it is delivering and demonstrates transparency and support for external expertise needed to deliver change.

Make sure you find the time to have a wash-up session with key people involved in the communications around the inspection as soon as possible after the publication of the inspection report. Capture what went well about the process and lessons learned. Talk to key audiences to find out their views about communications before, during and after the inspection. Then make sure you apply them to future inspections – they are likely to be relevant to inspections across all areas of the council.

Robust communications planning and support for SEND and children’s services is a long-term commitment and councils should be prepared to resource communications support in this crucial area. It may take years to deliver the changes needed and throughout this time communications needs to celebrate the progress made, address ongoing challenges and develop a good relationship with the people at the heart of its service – children, young people and their families – to make a real difference.

The Communications Improvement Team can support councils going through the inspection process through:

• Advice and support in the run-up to inspections
• Critical friend overview of plans, strategies, narratives and messaging
• Onsite visits to plan and prepare as well as dealing with fallout
• Media training for key spokespeople
• Media relations support and crisis comms
• Peer support for elected members
• Connections to other councils that have faced similar inspections and/or results
• Select committee briefings and training

Email [email protected] if you’d like to find out more about this support. You can find our full offer on our Comms Hub.

For non-comms, but children’s services related issues contact [email protected].

In March 2024, the LGA ran a webinar about the new SEND inspection framework and communications responses which included case studies from councils.

Case Studies

In this section are two case studies from very different local authorities about how each of their communications teams responded to different kinds of children’s services inspections.

Sunderland City Council: Strategic Communications during Ofsted inspection

Sunderland, a city with a proud industrial past and a bold vision for the future, is undergoing significant transformation through Sunderland City Council’s City Plan, which focuses on creating a dynamic, inclusive, and sustainable city where people can live well, work successfully, and thrive together.

Telford & Wrekin Council: How the council delivered communications during a SEND inspection

In March 2023, Telford & Wrekin Council received notification of an impending Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) inspection. This case study explores how the council turned a potentially high-pressure situation into a showcase of collaboration, clarity and confidence - and how communication played a vital role at every stage.