Significant improvement in children’s services in Cumbria

Ofsted inspectors have reported that all services for children provided by Cumbria County Council have improved significantly, meaning the intensified monitoring of the council’s performance by the Department for Education will now end.

The inspectorates latest report, the result of inspections in November, finds that the adoption service and the quality of the directorate’s leadership are both rated as ‘Good’, an improvement on the rating of ‘Inadequate’ in 2015.

Anne Burns, cabinet member for Children and Family Services, said: “This is a significant and positive step forward and reflects a huge amount of hard work since our last inspection. We know more work needs to be done; we want our services to be consistently good across the county and it is encouraging that we are already achieving that with our adoption and leadership performance.

“We are clear about what we need to do to now to take all our services to the next level, and I’m confident, given the progress so far, that we will achieve this. We are committed to ensuring the best possible outcomes for all of Cumbria’s children and young people.”