Services for children and families at Surrey County Council have been judged ‘good’ by government inspectors. Ofsted carried out their Inspecting Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) inspection in March of this year.
The inspection found that:
- Most children in Surrey receive effective and responsive help and protection
- Social workers are skilled at building relationships with children and with parents
- Most children in care live in stable homes where they thrive and make good progress. They have trusting and positive relationships with social workers
- When children are identified as being at risk of significant harm, children’s services work well and in a timely way with other agencies to reduce the risks to those children
- Personal advisers make and maintain positive relationships with care leavers
- Children’s social care services are led by an impressive, highly motivated, resilient and established leadership team, whose members have been relentless and successful in their quest to improve the quality and consistency of social work practice in Surrey
- Staff are well-trained and committed, feel highly valued and are proud to work in Surrey.
The inspection found that services have significantly improved since the council’s last inspection in 2022, commenting that ‘Leaders’ vision to ensure that children have a sense of belonging and positive experiences has been embraced across the workforce at every level’.
The ILACS inspection focuses on the experiences and progress of children who need help and protection, those of children in care, and those of care leavers, as well as the impact of leaders on social work practice with children and families. Each of these focus areas were also judged to be ‘good’, alongside the overall effectiveness judgement.
The report also noted that through accurate self-assessment, leaders understand the priorities moving forward. These include:
- Continuing with the implementation of the sufficiency strategy
- Continuing with a recruitment strategy to appoint more permanent staff
- Increasing housing choice for care leavers
- Increasing the numbers of care leavers who are in education, training or employment
- Strengthening the consistency of approach to children at risk of exploitation.
Cllr Clare Curran, Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning, said: “We are delighted that Ofsted have found our services for children, young people and those who care for them to be ‘good’.
“Our ‘good’ grading is a testament to the hard work, drive and dedication of our staff and partners, who work tirelessly to support Surrey’s children in often very difficult circumstances.
“Most importantly, this grading demonstrates the positive impact our service improvements are having on Surrey’s children and young people. Inspectors recognised that our workers know and understand well the children and young people they support, build positive relationships with children and the people caring for them, focus on their best interests and strive for them to achieve their full potential.
“We know there is still more to do to ensure that every single child in Surrey gets the positive experiences and outcomes that they deserve. We are now focused on our areas for development and are united in our determination to continue to provide even better care for children and young people in Surrey.”
Notes for editors
- Read the full report on Ofsted’s website here: Inspection of Surrey local authority March 2025
- The report gave areas of particular strength as:
- Early help services
- The virtual school
- Relationship-based practice
- The quality of direct work with families
- A focus on supporting children to remain within their family networks.
- In addition to continuing to embed the priority areas listed in the release, the council is also:
- Reviewing practice related to safety planning, and developing further training for practitioners where needed, to ensure these plans are consistently written in collaboration with children and families
- Undertaking an ambitious transformation programme, focusing this year on developing in-house provision of housing for looked after children and care leavers, increasing foster carers, and ensuring that the Children with Disabilities service provides interventions at the earliest opportunity to prevent escalation of need.
- Ofsted inspectors were on site for a two-week period from Monday 17 to Friday 28 March 2025. During this time:
- Inspectors spent a combined total of 442 hours on site
- Over 300 children’s cases were reviewed
- 144 members of staff were interviewed
- 11 partners were interviewed, including in the areas of policing, education, judiciary and CAFCASS
- 20 foster carers, adopters and relatives were spoken to
- 20 children were spoken to
- Nearly 6,000 pages of evidence were provided to inspectors.
