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Ofsted Talks

By: Ofsted
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  • The official Ofsted podcast.
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  • Young Offender Institutions: a decade of decline

    Young Offender Institutions: a decade of decline
    Oct 2 2024
    Here's the report discussed in this episode of the podcast: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/thematic-review-of-the-quality-of-education-in-young-offender-institutions-yois Mark Leech 0:03 Hello. Welcome to Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech, and today I'm hosting a conversation about young offender institutions, or YOIs for short. I'm very pleased to be joined by not one, but two of His Majesty's chief inspectors. We have Sir Martyn Oliver, His Majesty's Chief Inspector here at Ofsted, and we have Charlie Taylor, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons. Now both are here because the inspection of young offender institutions involves both His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons, HMIP and Ofsted. Also with us from Ofsted is Maria Navarro, one of Ofsted specialists in this area, and heavily involved in the report we're going to be talking about today. Welcome everyone. We'll get on to the report I mentioned in a moment. But first, let's talk a bit about young offender institutions and how they work. Charlie, before you joined HMIP, you were Chair of the Youth Justice Board, so this is an area you know really well. Could you give us a bit of a background, please, about YOIs and the children who they cater for? Charlie Taylor 1:05 Yes, certainly there are four YOIs in the country. One is private sector, the other three are public sector. They house about around 400 children at the moment, which is a dramatic reduction from when I did my review in 2016 when there are about 1500 and an even more dramatic reduction from the the early 2000s when there are about three and a half thousand children locked up in England and Wales. The age of kids who end up in a YOI is 15 to 18, but the vast majority of them are about 16 and 17, with most being 17 at the moment, because of the prison population crisis, they're also housing more 18 year olds than they would have done in the past. So in the past, unless you had a very short time to serve, you would move on into an adult prison. But they're now hanging on to 18 year olds for longer as well, which represents a challenge. Mark Leech 1:57 And YOIs do they cater for boys as well as girls? Or is it all boys? Charlie Taylor 2:02 Well, there are a few girls in YOIs due to some anomalies, because of the closure of parts of the youth custody sector, particularly secure training centers. And what that meant is that provision had to be made for a small amount of very vulnerable girls who who were unable to be placed either in secure children's homes or or into secure training centers. So Weatherby YOI, up in Yorkshire, has a handful of girls there, and certainly that's an issue we've raised many concerns about during our inspection reports over the last couple of years, and in terms of the sort of the way YOIS operate. Mark Leech 2:43 Obviously, you've mentioned secure training centers, then and secure children's homes. What's different about the YOIs, would it be more recognizable as a sort of prison environment, or is it more of a children's home environment? Charlie Taylor 2:54 No, certainly it's much more of a prison environment. So the populations are higher, around 150 or so in somewhere like Weatherby, around 120 in someone like Wellington and in Feltham in West London, again, around 120 something like that. So they have a much more prisony feel, unfortunately, than than secure children's homes, the secure school, or even, indeed, secure, secure training centers. And I think that's been one of the criticisms for many years, is actually that they often appear to do a better job of preparing kids for a life in prison, rather than a life on the outside going on and being successful when they leave. Mark Leech 3:36 That's probably a good point to bring in Martyn from Ofsted. Our involvement might come as a bit of a surprise to many people. Obviously, we do have that role in in adult prisons as well. Could you tell us a bit more about why and how Ofsted are involved in YOI inspections? Sir Martyn Oliver 3:49 Well, Ofsted works with a number of providers across the 92,000 people that we inspect and regulate and in YOIs, and indeed in prisons. We're really grateful to work with Charlie and his team at HMIP and we look very specifically at the education that children receive in these settings. So for example, in YOIs, we've just done a thematic joint review with Charlie's team, and we've looked very specifically at leadership and the quality of education, and it's actually quite a damning report, where between the two of us, we find that there's been a decade long decline in the quality of education for our most vulnerable children, and when you think about the very need for rehabilitation, clearly education has a massively important role. And the fact that we find that there are systemic failings, it's a really concerning moment that I think Charlie and I now say, this needs to say, enough is enough. This ...
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    24 mins
  • Good decisions: children with complex needs in children’s homes

    Good decisions: children with complex needs in children’s homes
    Aug 21 2024
    Host Mark Leech listens in to Lisa Pascoe, deputy director (regulation and social care policy), Helen Humphries (specialist adviser for residential care) and Jenny Bird (research lead) as they discuss the findings from our recent research report ‘Good decisions: children with complex needs in children’s homes’. Read the report 'Good decisions: children with complex needs in children's homes' Read the blogs: Providing good experiences for children with complex needs Children with complex needs in children's homes Transcript Mark: Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech, and in this episode, we're going to be hearing about children with complex needs and what that means to local authorities, children's services and those working with children who live in children's homes. Earlier this year, we published a research report called good decisions children with complex needs in children's homes, and I listened in to colleagues from our social care policy and research teams as they discussed the findings. Lisa: I'm Lisa Pascoe. I'm the Deputy Director here at Ofsted with responsibility for regulation and social care policy and I'm joined today by Helen, our specialist advisor for residential care, and Jenny, our research lead. Jenny, let's start with you. It would be really helpful to set out for people why we did this research. Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. So, it follows on really from a piece we'd done previously, which was looking at local authorities plans for sufficiency. And from that piece of work, we could see that local authorities were really struggling to find supportive homes for children who have complex needs. So we wanted to look at that even more. We knew as well that stakeholders were concerned about children's homes not accepting referrals for children with complex needs. We'd heard some things about them holding out for children who present fewer risks and, sort of preferring to take referrals for those children. And we heard as well about some concerns around the potential impact it could have on Ofsted inspections. So we really wanted this research to look into that further and to highlight good practice that was already out there, as well as the challenges that still exist, and what action could potentially be taken, either across the sector or by ourselves. Lisa: So how did we make it work? Jenny, what did we actually do? Jenny: So we used a two-phase design in this research. We started off at the start of 2023 with a survey that went out to all local authority Children's Services and all registered children's homes, and we asked them things like what they think complex needs means, what happens when they try to find places or are approached with a referral, and what the facilitators and the barriers are to finding good homes for children. Lisa: If I remember rightly, Jenny, didn't we publish something after phase one? Jenny: We did, yeah. We published a blog in around May time to highlight the findings of that survey in more detail. Lisa: And then we moved into phase two. Jenny: We did, yeah. So that built on phase one, and it was made up of two parts. The main bulk of the work was case studies. We'd completed 10 case studies, which we identified through working with three different local authorities across two regions. And in those we spoke to people who were involved in making decisions about children's care or in providing the care itself, as well as children. To supplement those, we also ran some focus groups with other groups of professionals who are involved in the care of children with complex needs. So that was people from the Association for Virtual School Heads, as well as staff who work in local authority commissioning. And we also held a focus group with some of our own Ofsted inspectors as well to talk about how they experience inspections when they're going to homes where children with complex needs are living. Lisa: I think one of the things, Helen, was about this use of the phrase complex needs, wasn't it? I mean, it camouflages what's actually happening for children. Helen: Yes, it's a global term that I think is on unhelpful and categorizes children into this uncertainty which is complex needs, instead of actually saying this child's particular need is related to their mental health, or, because of that this is what happens and this is how their behaviour is demonstrated. It just draws children into a classification that actually isn't helpful and we'd really prefer not to have that phrase bandied about and used so much. Lisa: Yeah, I mean, I think there was some common themes. Weren't there. There were certainly children who needed help from a variety of professionals. They needed specialist help from, you know, from health services. They needed specialist input and there was certainly some common kind of characteristics of the children Jenny, as well wasn't there in terms of children, particularly children with serious mental health needs, ...
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    24 mins
  • Ofsted Big Listen

    Ofsted Big Listen
    May 17 2024
    In this episode, Mark Leech (Deputy Director, Communications) speaks with Wendy Ratcliff (HMI, Early Education), Dan Lambert (SHMI, Schools) and His Majesty's Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, about Ofsted's Big Listen. Ofsted's Big Listen closes on 31st May and we want to hear from everyone we work with and work for. Take part here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/ofsted-big-listen. Transcript: Mark: Hello and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. Actually, this episode, could be renamed Ofsted listens because we're going to be talking about our Big Listen, the huge consultation that we kicked off at the beginning of March. We're now recording this in early May. So there's still a few weeks left for people to give us their views. We want to hear from parents, we want to hear from all of the providers across the different sectors that we work with. So if you haven't given your views yet, please go to gov.uk/ofstedbiglisten. So today we're going to talk to a couple of colleagues who have been part of the Big Listen - they've been out and about meeting with the public, meeting with people in the sectors that we work with and hearing what people are saying. So we're joined by Wendy Ratcliff, who is one of our HMI. Wendy works in early education. And we're joined as well by Dan Lambert, who is a senior HMI for the East of England region at Ofsted so welcome Wendy and Dan. Wendy, I’ll start with you, what's been your take as you've been going out and about? Where have you been and what have you been hearing? Wendy: So we've been out and about in early education, as we usually do. And we've been out on some of our curriculum roadshows at the moment, which are focusing in on the key messages from our best start in life research review. And so we've been speaking with early years practitioners, we've been speaking with managers, we've been speaking with those who provide early years in schools and childminders as well. So we've been hearing things around that fear factor of Ofsted. And we've also been hearing things around notice periods, childminders, for example, one of the things that makes them more anxious is the fact we phone them five days before their inspection and then they're not certain which day we're going to go. So actually, that makes that anxiety worse. And the other thing I guess, is nursery managers, we make that call around midday the day before the inspection. And again, thinking about is that the right time, our inspectors are really good at saying is this a good time to have that conversation, but actually calling a day nursery at lunchtime, the day before the inspection is due, is that the best time for us to be making that notification call? So there's some of the things that people are telling us that they'd like to put forward in the Big Listen. Mark: That's really interesting, because we're getting straight into the really meaty issues, aren't we and we’re trying to capture as much from people through the consultation online. But I think it is important that people understand that as well as that we are out listening to people on the ground and we've also commissioned some external organisations, some independent organisations to do some further work with the sectors that we work with. And to do some further surveys and some focus groups to hear from different groups of people that perhaps it's a bit harder to reach. So it's really interesting the notice period thing, because there's a lot of talk about that in schools and people talk about whether we're giving enough notice to teachers and to school leaders that we're going to be in. We normally give them a call the day before. As you say it’s slightly different with childminders, it’s different, again with further education providers. Dan, are you hearing much about notice periods? What else are you picking up more in the school sector? Dan: Yeah, I've had some really great meetings with big and small groups of head teachers, senior leaders, governors and staff in schools as well. And notice periods, it's something that I think lots of us struggle to put our finger on. I was a head teacher a while back, and I certainly had the phone call the day before. And I couldn't quite say whether a little bit more notice, or a little bit less notice would be right for me if I put my hand on my heart and think about that. The message from leaders is they really want to be in their schools when Ofsted inspect, they feel that that allows them to put their best foot forward. But they also don't want that extended period, where they think actually, this will only raise my anxiety if I have more time to think about that. Incidentally, a lot of my work is in the independent sector, where much of our work is carried out with no notice. And I think you'd be amazed just at how calm that is. And it's been fascinating discussing that with head teachers and school leaders who've acknowledged actually that may be a nicer...
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    14 mins

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