Our story

In March 2019 Childrens Services in Trafford were inspected by Ofsted as part of the ILACS framework. The result of that inspection was that we were judged to be inadequate and we began our improvement journey.

As a consequence to that judgement we created an Improvement Plan. We are very ambitious for our children and we have set out our improvement plan as ‘Our 8 Ambitions’.

Ambition 1

Leaders and managers at every level understand and influence practice to be consistently good

Ambition 2

Children and families receive the right help, at the right time, from the right professional

Ambition 3

Quality of Practice is consistently good across the service so that it makes a difference to our children and families

Ambition 4

Our children will live safely and permanently with a family, wherever it is safe to do so

Ambition 5

To narrow the gap through working collaboratively to reduce the number of children that are living and experiencing neglect

Ambition 6

We will work together to strengthen our practice and approach when working with families where domestic abuse and or coercion is a feature and to reduce the harm our children experience

Ambition 7

To take action and collectively safeguard our children and young people from all forms of exploitation and going missing

Ambition 8

To have "partnerships with purpose" that impact positively upon the lives of children, young people and families.

In our recent Ofsted Focussed Visit (March 2021) we were really pleased with the feedback that we know ourselves well, the plans that are in place are the right ones to support our improvement and that whilst COVID-19 had undoubtedly impacted, there was progress since the last inspection.

Our vision is that at all levels, our interventions make life better for children and families and that when we do work we have the core value of ‘would this be good enough for my child’.

We are working hard at creating the conditions for practice to flourish and are committed for practice led improvements. Our commitment to this starts with a dedicated Practice Improvement and Learning Service which is really starting to shape a learning culture and is creating opportunities for practitioners and managers across the service to get involved and lead on practice improvements.

Our vision is to have practitioners who are confident and brave in their practice but also to be held and supported by managers and leaders at all levels.

Our recent DfE improvement board chair and advisor is confident that we are on the right track and we are making progress.