PERFORMANCE figures for some Dorset Council social work cases have declined between the summer and September.

A council report says that audits carried out by managers on a sample of just over 100 cases showed a fall in average scores from 6.2 to 5.5, out of 10, between July and September.

The audits discovered a drop in regular supervision from August to September leading to the conclusion: “It remains a concern that this continues to score poorly, and it remains the case that the comments are around frequency and lack of reflection in supervision taking place.”

A report to the council’s corporate parenting board, which meets today, says that this lack of reflective supervision will impact on professional development for social workers and may affect outcomes for the people they are working with.

Another area of concern was evidencing that children were listened to and their needs understood with August and September scores both lower than they have been since October 2018.

Also scoring low was the performance around meetings – whether the right people were there, whether they were purposeful and that the minutes and actions required were shared.

“Where this scored poorly the comments were around the fact that the meeting may have taken place but was not written up and minutes distributed in a timely fashion. It remains the case that when you speak to the worker it is often clear that work is taking place, but it is not always recorded consistently and in a timely way,” said a report to the board.

The report says that there has been an upward trend since April 2019 in cases being judged as ‘requires improvement’, reaching 64 per cent in October 2019, the highest percentage since October 2018.

But the report says that in other areas there has been an improvement – in child protection conferences and in looked after children (LAC) reviews although the report says social worker paperwork for reviews are not always received in a ‘timely fashion’.

Statutory visits for looked after children also improved. The report authors concluded: “There continues to be a consistent gradual improvement for LAC Statutory Visits completed on time although it did fall very slightly this last month from 86.11 % to 85.73% completed on time for April through to August. The same improvement had not been evidenced for children subject to a child protection (CP) Plan which had remained almost static or dropped. It is important to note however that of those completed late (33.46%), almost half (17.04%) were overdue by 1-3 days.”

The report says that as a result of the audits additional training and guidance has now been put in place and the audit tool redesigned to help identify good practice and track actions which need to be completed.

Said the report conclusion: “We will know when we are making improvements when the monthly audit returns consistently show a percentage increase in those that are graded ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’, with fewer ‘requires improvement’ and no ‘inadequate’ judgements. We will also know from feedback from children, young people and their families as well as seeing improvements in our general performance data.”