Havering SEND Parent Hits Out At Council Over Latest Ofsted Inspection.

By Ruth Kettle-Frisby – Guest Writer and Community Activist

Ruth is passionate about fostering positive change within the local community and regularly contributes insights and stories to The Havering Daily.

Havering’s Children’s Services Department continues to fall short of Ofsted expectations despite increased financial investment.

Local SEND Campaigners wondering at what point does Local Authority accountability kick in.

Ofsted has issued a concerning monitoring update on Havering’s ‘Inadequate’ Children’s Services Department citing that attempts to turn the failing department around are too slow and falling short in many areas due to poor leadership and a lack of technical knowledge. 

The monitoring update – shared with Havering Council on 29th April 2025 – reveals that despite ‘substantial financial investment’, multiagency information sharing is poor, and there remains a disconnect between policy and its application to improve vulnerable children’s lives and protect them from child exploitation.

Ofsted highlighted the areas of most concern persisting within the failing Department:

• Speed of progress being made regarding vulnerable children’s entries into care; too many children are being left to cope and survive in short-term situations that prevent them from forming attachments, inevitably impacting their ability to feel safe, secure and to thrive.

• Children and families remain in unsustainable living conditions, and delays in receiving permanent care for children persist, lacking secure and suitable long-term homes.

• Gaps in record taking regarding culture, identity and heritage impact children’s suitability to foster placements.

• Too many children in short -term situations, lacking opportunities to form trusting attachments to primary carers in order to thrive.

The upsetting report comes at a time when Havering has restructured many of its Children’s Services teams, with departments experiencing a freeze on agency and permanent recruitment, in some cases plummeting to 50% capacity.

Havering Council frequently uses the excuse of huge caseloads as the issue for their systematic failures yet Ofsted notes that ‘most [Havering] social workers have reasonable caseloads, although a lack of consistent, stable management limits the regularity of supervision. This sadly further flies in the face of Cllr Ford’s statement in January of this year declaring ‘a focus on retaining and appointing permanent staff’. 

Depending on their own personal access to time and resources, few parent-carers will be surprised to learn that ‘care planning for some children is not of sufficient quality to meet their timescales for performance’, and it will be of no comfort to families accessing their children’s precarious rights that ‘[m]any practitioners do not have the confidence and technical knowledge to undertake detailed care planning and contingency planning’. 

While we welcome the steps in the right direction for children in the borough, it is clear from this report that too many children are being failed, and that systemic accountability is still woefully lacking. Havering Council are aware of these significant cases of injustice, and of their care duties to these vulnerable children and families, and yet these cases persist.

It is for this reason that we call upon Cllr Ford to do the right thing: to account for this appalling injustice and to step down as Cabinet Member for Children and Young People. 

We call on Tara Geere to acknowledge and account for the slow progress that is resulting in our most vulnerable children being failed and to present to the council in a full Cabinet meeting, how the Department will expedite the vital changes needed safeguard Havering’s children, who deserve better than this. 

A spokesperson for Havering Council said:

“Since February 2024 the OFSTED approved Improvement Plan has been worked on cross-party with regular meetings with the DfE. External scrutiny has been taking place with boards and external experts, regular checks and reporting from Ofsted and the DfE. The Council leadership has ensured additional funding has been made available to make the necessary improvements.

Improved IT systems and training have been put into place and Havering has bucked the national trend in increasing permanent social workers. We have also seen a significant reduction in caseloads for social work teams as these were previously too high. There has been a full restructure of the services and new staff recruited to deliver the improvements set out in the approved Improvement Plan.

The Improvement Plan has been before Scrutiny and Cabinet and is made publicly available on the Councils website.
The Council and OFSTED recognise that this is an improvement journey. The Senior Management Team, Cabinet and Council continue to work in accordance with the approved OFSTED Plan to make the necessary and vital changes required.”

Progress against the Improvement Plan take place on a regular basis with OFSTED, DfE Improvement Advisor, external advisors, Senior Management Team, Cabinet Leads, Cross-Party Leaders and the Plan can be found here:
https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/ieIssueDetails.aspx?IId=45592&Opt=3

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