Children's services run by Bucks County Council are "still not good enough", inspectors have warned in the latest damning Ofsted report - which found “critical weaknesses”. 

A high turnover of social workers, high caseloads and poor recording have all been blamed for “inconsistent and too slow” progress made by the county council since it was last inspected in 2014.

“Serious shortfalls” in the service have led education bosses to rate it inadequate again following their latest visit in November, however, adoption performance was judged to be good.  

Inspectors found management oversight in the majority of cases was inadequate, claiming that some children have experienced a delay in being “looked after” and left in “unacceptable” situations for too long.

Some children’s cases have also been allocated to managers rather than to social workers, due to increasing workloads.

The response to children who go missing or who are at risk of sexual exploitation is said to be improving, but is not yet “sufficiently robust” for all children.

The education watchdog also found that there are “serious inadequacies” in services for looked-after children, with a “small” number of children experiencing “further significant harm and neglect while being looked after”.

The report, published today (Monday), said: “A few children in care and placed with parents have continued to live in neglectful circumstances and some have not had all their basic needs met.

“For these children, the local authority did not recognise escalating risks and did not take firm action to protect them.

“When children looked after go missing and are vulnerable to criminal or sexual exploitation, risks are not analysed and the response is delayed and weak.”

Some social workers were also seen to have a “lack of professional curiosity” and while some children’s files are “succinct”, others are out of date or incomplete.

The report added: “Social workers visit children and demonstrate a genuine desire to improve their circumstances, yet the visits are not always effective, because they are not sufficiently inquisitive about what is going on in children’s lives.

“Some children spoke warmly about their social workers, but others have had too many changes of social worker. One described the impact of having to make new relationships as making her feel ‘like a doll with a string that’s been snapped’.

“Another child had waited anxiously for an additional week to find out if he could stay long term in his foster placement, because his social worker was away and nobody had remembered or thought about the importance of telling him the outcome of the final hearing.”

Arrangements to meet the needs of unaccompanied asylum seekers when they first arrive were also found to be insufficient to ensure that their needs are met.

As of October 31 last year, 2,447 children had been identified through assessment as being formally in need of a specialist children’s service – down from 3,363 at March 31, 2017.

Inspectors found improvements have been successfully achieved in some service areas, mostly in reaction to the shortfalls identified during monitoring visits.

The service now has a strong senior leadership team who work effectively with partner agencies to increase the awareness of risks to vulnerable children.