Our Ofsted consultation response
Our response to Ofsted consultation on Inspections of Local Authority Children’s Services
Ofsted has recently consulted on a proposal to change its inspection of local authority children’s services (ILACS) framework. You can find the consultation here.
The proposal is to introduce a separate assessment as part of the inspection on the “experiences and progress of care leavers”.
In the current ILACS framework, this is currently included as part of a wider assessment on the “experiences and progress of children in care and care leavers”.
We welcome this proposal.
It is important that local authority children’s services are actively assessed and inspected on the support they provide for care leavers and the wider experience of care leavers.
This should form a fundamental part of the wider ILACS inspection and the overall evaluation and judgement for local authority children’s services. Our response sets out the criteria that Ofsted should consider when assessing the experiences of care leavers.
Hearing from young people
At Become, we felt it was essential that Ofsted heard directly from care leavers about their views of the proposals.
We developed a short survey for care-experienced young people, breaking down the questions from the consultation, and asking their thoughts on what they felt was most important.
We have shared the findings with Ofsted and you can see the survey analysis here.