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<p>The department aims to provide world-class education, training and care for everyone,
whatever their background. We work closely with local authorities to make sure that
everyone has the chance to reach their potential and to live a more fulfilled life.</p><p>We
currently have an improvement system which seeks to identify local authorities with
children’s services at risk of failing and to work collaboratively with them to put
in place targeted support to help them improve the services they provide to vulnerable
children and families.</p><p>Working closely with the sector, we have identified areas
where help is needed to avoid failure, funding good local authorities to provide peer
support on children’s services through the Partners in Practice programme to more
than 80 authorities, with work underway to broker support for many more. We are investing
£3 million over the 3 years to March 2021 to support leadership across children’s
services, working with the Local Government Association. 146 local authorities out
of a total of 151 have benefited from the programme.</p><p>Since the programme rolled
out in November 2017, we have identified many local authorities who would benefit
from additional help to avoid the risk of potential failure and have provided immediate
support. As a result, we have seen an overall improvement in the quality of children’s
services as judged by Ofsted. At the end of August 2020, 50% of local authorities
were judged Good or Outstanding at their most recent inspection. This is 14 percentage
points higher than the proportion judged Good or Outstanding following each authority’s
first inspection under the previous Ofsted framework.</p><p>The department also acts
quickly and decisively to intervene in local authorities found to be failing in their
delivery of children’s services and judged Inadequate by Ofsted. Our intervention
brings results: the first children’s services trust in Doncaster moved from Inadequate
to Good in just 2 years, and after almost a decade of deeply entrenched failure, children’s
services in Birmingham are no longer Inadequate. Where we have intervened and provided
support, other local authorities have moved from Inadequate to Good, such as Rotherham
and Barnet. All the local authorities judged Inadequate that were inspected in 2019
subsequently improved to be Good or Requiring Improvement.</p><p>Our aim is to continue
the improvements we are making at pace so that, by 2022, less than 10% of local authorities
are rated Inadequate by Ofsted, halving failure rates within 5 years and providing
consistently better services for thousands of children and families across the country.</p><p>Similarly,
our vision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is
the same as for all children – that they achieve well in their early years, at school
and in college, that they find employment, lead happy and fulfilled lives, and experience
choice and control. We are driving high performance across local area SEND services,
aiming for 75% of areas delivering good quality SEND services. We are working closely
with Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission to identify areas of weakness through
the Interim Visits programme and the current inspection cycle. To reflect our ambitious
programme of improvement in this area, we have commissioned a new, rolling cycle of
Area SEND inspections to commence in 2022.</p><p>In relation to helping local authorities
improve support for vulnerable children during the COVID-19 outbreak, the safety and
wellbeing of the most vulnerable children has always been our priority. This is why
nurseries and colleges have remained open to them because it the safest place for
them to be.</p><p>Over recent months, we have worked across the government to improve
what we know about the children and young people who are most at risk. We have worked
closely with local authorities to improve our understanding of how COVID-19 is impacting
children’s social care services across the country and how we can best support or
challenge individual councils to protect the most vulnerable children in their care.</p><p>Regional
Education and Children’s Teams (REACT) have been established to better co-ordinate
how the department captures information and intelligence about local needs and circumstances
in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, including in relation to vulnerable children,
whilst offering support where it is needed.</p><p>More widely, during March and April
2020, the government provided £3.2 billion of emergency grant funding and over £5
billion of cashflow support to support local authorities with the COVID-19 outbreak.</p><p>On
2 July, the government announced a new comprehensive package of support to address
spending pressures and in recognition of lost income. A further £500 million brought
funding, given to support local councils with pressures, to £4.3 billion. This funding
is un-ringfenced, recognising local authorities are best placed to decide how to meet
the major service pressures in their local area, including support for children’s
services, that have been caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.</p>
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