socialmedian: Ofsted not tuned in to children's services

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Ofsted not tuned in to children's services

Source: guardian.co.uk Politics

Oct 28, 2009

Summary

These are critical times for Ofsted, the children's services inspectorate. Inspectors are, for good reasons, never entirely popular with the people they inspect, but when private irritation turns into public displays of contempt it's time to worry. This is now happening, and Ofsted is in serious danger of losing the trust and respect of the social services on which it stands in judgment.

Barely a day goes by, it seems, without the organisation coming under fire. Last week, John Coughlan, the respected children's services chief at Hampshire county council, and the man ministers hired to firefight in Haringey at the height of the Baby Peter crisis last year, lashed out at Ofsted's performance in his speech to the national adults and children conference in Harrogate. The following day, the president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, Kim Bromley-Derry, in a thinly-veiled swipe at the regulator, bemoaned the "simplistic, process-driven" inspections that were "draining confidence and capacity" in children's services.

On the final day of the conf

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