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Northamptonshire County Council has announced that, following a recent Ofsted inspection, children’s services in Northamptonshire have “improved across all areas” and are no longer rated inadequate.

In 2013, Northamptonshire County Council’s child protection, adoption and looked after children services were inspected by Ofsted and were rated as inadequate. As a result, the authority was issued with a direction notice from the Department for Education.

Since then, the county council has worked closely with partners to implement improvements across the service areas, overseen by a monthly Improvement Board.

The five-week Ofsted inspection in February 2016 resulted in children’s services being rated “requires improvement to be good”, which the council says marks a key success in its children’s services improvement journey – and brings it into line with almost half of all local authorities in the country.

However, the service needs to continue its work around the recruitment and retention of permanent social workers, the council said in a statement.

The latest Ofsted report flags up the “excellent” Social Work Academy, which is helping to recruit the social workers to Northamptonshire – and improvements in how the service responds to safeguarding concerns, including the introduction of the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH).

The report also states that all of the weaknesses highlighted in the last inspection have been addressed – but the inspection team adds that work needs to continue to reduce the level of temporary and agency staff in the service, in order to ensure children and young people are given consistency in their care and support.

Northamptonshire County Council Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for children’s services, Councillor Heather Smith, said:

“We were fully aware of the challenge we faced three years ago, when Ofsted last inspected our children’s services – and since then, we have all worked incredibly hard to improve the service and make sure children and young people in Northamptonshire are safe and well looked after.

“We know there is still work to do to achieve the level we are aspiring to – but I am pleased that Ofsted has recognised our progress and the important changes we are introducing to address their earlier concerns.

“Like many local authorities, we do need to get better at recruiting and retaining permanent staff, so that children and young people get consistent support from their social worker.

“The implementation of our children’s trust later this year will play an important part in addressing this issue, as it will allow us to improve terms and conditions for permanent staff – and reduce the current reliance on costly agency staff.

“I’m delighted that Ofsted has also highlighted the work of our fantastic Social Work Academy, which is another part of the solution, as it means we can attract the best quality, newly-qualified social workers and offer them training and support as they begin their social work career with Northamptonshire County Council.”

Director for children, families and education Alex Hopkins added:

“This new rating from Ofsted, while an important milestone, does not mark the end of our improvement journey – and our hard work will continue to improve and deliver services for children and young people that we can all be proud of.”

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