Director of children’s services in Tameside 'happy with progress'

The council boss leading the push for improvement to Tameside’s failing children’s services believes she’s on track to deliver her ambitious targets.

Jill Colbert has reflected on the two-and-a-half years since her department was deemed inadequate and placed in special measures by Ofsted. The director of children’s services (DCS) took on the mammoth job of turning the service around in early 2025 and has spent most of her time without a permanent leadership team.

That has now been resolved after almost a year of recruiting. 

“That’s probably the first time in living memory that Tameside has a fully permanent leadership team,” Jill said. “I’ve also been in post since January 2025 so I’ve outlived most of my predecessors.”

Jill spoke with the Local Democracy Reporting Service comes off the back of what she claims is one of their best Ofsted visits since that catastrophic report back in December 2023, which dubbed the service a failure.

The latest monitoring visit focused on Tameside’s 572 cared for children – which includes those in foster care, kinship care, in children’s homes, care leavers or anyone who requires the authority’s support.

The report, written by inspector Lisa Summers, credited the service for the new permanent leadership team bringing ‘shared focus on improvement, underpinned by well-targeted improvement planning’.

It added that performance has been strengthened when it comes to assessments of children’s circumstances; coaching and training of staff; as well as the use of regular auditing and data reports to inform their work.

There is a reduced use of agency workers and the staff levels are stabilising, the inspector notes in her report, published last month. However, the use of agency workers is still too high for Jill – who says agency staff makes up 13.18 per cent of the workforce, with 28 pc of that being social workers. 

The children’s services boss wants to see that 28 pc figure come down to less than 10 pc. Jill adds that their costs are coming down from £12m to £5m through the reduced reliance on agency staff.

Despite the positives raised in the Ofsted report, there is still a long way to go in terms of improvement. The inspector highlights there are still inconsistencies in practice and the quality of care plans. 

Dealing with an ‘extensive legacy of poor practice’ is also highlighted by the inspector.

The report states: “There is a high proportion of children who have been placed with their parents for many years without a review of these arrangements. When a decision is made to discharge a child’s care order, progressing this remains slow for too many children. 

“Some of these children and their families disengage from statutory support and the local authority do not consistently address this. As a consequence, the local authority cannot be assured that these placements continue to be appropriate or safe.”

Jill explained this looks at where a child has gone out to live with someone in their families, stayed with their parents or been placed under special guardianship. Ofsted is looking into how the service checks to see if that placement is still safe and appropriate. 

Jill added: “This is not unusual in an authority under a lot of pressure because you’re not worried about them because they’re suitably cared for but we haven’t formally reviewed that set of circumstances. They’ll get visits and we’ll understand what is happening for them, but we need to decide what we’re going to do. 

“But that bit about deciding and making clear confident decisions is still very much part of our challenge. This is because there is a lack of confidence in a system where you’ve consistently told you’re not good.

“The line where they talk about legacy work. That will be with us for some time. 

“If you think about the scale of the difficulties, it goes back 10 years. For example, if you’ve been in and out of care and there have been some early issues and they haven’t been dealt with.

“Now people will think we don’t do a good job for them, which we haven’t. That legacy work will be around for some years because it takes us a while to put things right for families.”

The latest Ofsted inspection report is night and day from the picture painted by Andy Couldrick’s scathing report back in September 2024. The children’s commissioner’s initial report described failures, toxicity and an oppressive and bullying culture within the service.

The latest monitoring visit report read: “Social workers, IROs and frontline managers are very positive about working for Tameside. Some have moved from other local authorities because of the positive experiences of their colleagues. 

“Social workers report that leaders are accessible and visible, and they described a tangible difference in the workplace culture since the strategic director of children’s services took up the post.”

Jill has two more monitoring reports before a full re-inspection next year. By then she hopes to be in a position to have dealt with the ‘big ticket’ issues.

The DCS concluded: “Workforce, supervision, having great plans for children, understanding what’s happening for them – those things I would like to think we’re in a much improved position by next year.”

The full inspection of the services, which will determine if Tameside’s children’s services will come out of special measures, could happen at any time from Spring 2027 onwards.