Southwark's Children's Services has successfully maintained its 'good' Ofsted rating, with inspectors commending strong leadership and effective early help services. The findings were presented to the Education and Local Economy Scrutiny Commission on Thursday, July 23, 2026.

The Ofsted inspection, conducted between March 9 and 13, 2026, found that the service remains good across all judgement areas. Key strengths identified include political and corporate leadership, a stable and skilled workforce, and good outcomes for children in care and care leavers.

Workforce Stability and Skill

The service boasts a stable, skilled and motivated workforce, supported by a positive organisational culture, effective workforce strategies and sustained investment in services. Inspectors noted that there were no social worker vacancies at the time of inspection and that staff felt valued and supported. Leaders are committed to continuous improvement and have established a robust learning culture, with practitioners having ready access to relevant training through the comprehensive LearningFest programme.

Outcomes for Children in Care and Care Leavers

Ofsted highlighted several factors contributing to the 'good' rating for outcomes for children in care and care leavers. For children in care, most children in care live in stable and nurturing homes where they feel safe and happy and make good progress. Furthermore, through coordinated support from social workers, clinicians and carers, alongside robust commissioning, an increasing number of children are experiencing greater placement stability and are living in or near Southwark, helping them maintain connections with their communities, schools and support networks.

Care leavers receive high-quality support from social workers and personal advisers (PAs), helping them to navigate independence at a pace that reflects their needs. The report states that most care leavers benefit from supportive relationships with social workers and PAs who know them well and advocate effectively for them. Additionally, care leavers are well-supported to engage in education, employment, or training, with a wide range of schemes helping them build functional and employability skills.

Areas for Development and Improvement

Despite the positive overall rating, the inspection did identify areas requiring development. These include strengthening the response to children subject to police protection powers, improving the response to children in care who go missing, and enhancing the quality and consistency of management oversight and supervision.

Addressing Identified Weaknesses

Helen Woolgar, Deputy Director of Children's Services, presented the findings, noting that these areas for improvement were already known to the service and that improvement activities were underway. These have been consolidated into a response plan, detailed in the Consolidated Post-Inspection Improvement Plan (Appendix 2 of the Ofsted report). For instance, to bolster the response to children subject to police protection powers, actions include amending practice guidance for Review Strategy Meetings, ensuring senior manager oversight within two working days, and weekly audits by Heads of Service. To improve the response to children in care who go missing, activities involve establishing a cross-service Missing Improvement Steering Group and a weekly Missing Panel, updating the Missing from Home & Care protocol, and embedding 'missing risk' identifiers in statutory social care assessments. Enhancing management oversight and supervision includes amending Power BI Dashboards for better reporting, embedding management supervision training into induction, and developing a renewed programme of supervision and oversight training.

Oversight and Monitoring

The effectiveness of the consolidated post-inspection action plan is monitored through its detailed structure, which includes actions, leads, timelines, and impact measures. For example, the Head of Quality Assurance is responsible for a 6-month quality review of audit of supervision and management oversight with an impact measure of Audit findings evidence improving quality of supervision. The Assistant Director – Transformation is tasked with commissioning external QA providers to support a refresh of audit training. Overall oversight is embedded within the service's quality assurance mechanisms and is reflected in the Consolidated Post-Inspection Improvement Plan presented to the Education and Local Economy Scrutiny Commission.

Potential Risks

While the meeting information does not explicitly detail the potential consequences of not adequately addressing these areas, the Ofsted report highlights concerns. Regarding police protection powers, the report states that management oversight, assessment and risk analysis are not sufficiently robust... A small number of children return to their families in the absence of timely, well-informed decisions, that lack the commensurate level of senior oversight before these arrangements end. For children in care who go missing, interventions have limited impact and repeated episodes continue. Return home interviews are not always completed, and social workers do not consistently use their relationships with children to explore with them the reasons they go missing or to undertake robust safety planning. Supervision does not routinely support sufficient curiosity or adaptation of approaches, hampering efforts to reduce risks or missing incidents.

A consolidated post-inspection action plan has been developed to address these points.

Read the full public reports pack for the Education and Local Economy Scrutiny Commission meeting here: Public reports pack Thursday 23-Jul-2026 19.00 Education and Local Economy Scrutiny Commission