Fingers are crossed at West Sussex County Council that the Department for Education will decide not to hand control of children’s services to an independent trust.
Inspectors have noted the significant progress made since the service was judged inadequate in 2019 – so much so that the order to transfer control was paused in December 2020.
During a meeting of the Children & Young People’s Services Scrutiny Committee on June 30, Lucy Butler, director of children, young people & learning, shared her hopes that the order would be dropped completely.
Any recommendation to do so would come from children’s commissioner John Coughlan, who was appointed to track the council’s progress.
Ms Butler said:
“If the progress continues this year, he will be able to write another report – hopefully in December – recommending that we don’t become a trust.
“And that is certainly our aspiration and certainly our hope.
“We still are waiting for that and obviously the commissioner is working with us very closely and carefully to see if he can make that recommendation.
“That is not done lightly. We are the only local authority that have had a statutory instrument to become a trust, which the Department for Education has halted.
"So that is quite a thing.”
The fight to keep control of children’s services is by no means over.
Ms Butler told the meeting that Mr Coughlan has another report to write this month before he considers the options in December.
She said:
“We still could become a trust but we’re really hopeful that won’t happen.”
The next monitoring visit is scheduled for September 7/8 this year, two months from now.
Even if the council is allowed to keep control of children’s services, the work to improve is a long way from complete.
The meeting was told it would take three to five years.
Jacquie Russell, cabinet member for children and young people, said:
“We’ve made no bones about it, there is an awfully long way to go in terms of getting children’s services in West Sussex to a standard that is acceptable."
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