Surrey County Council Children's Social Care Services 'good' say Ofsted

Result of inspection in March 2025

Children’s social care services have been judged as 'Good' by government inspectors. Ofsted carried out their Inspecting Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) inspection in March of this year.

The ILACS inspection focuses on the:

• experiences and progress of children who need help and protection
• experiences and progress of children in care
• experiences and progress of care leavers
• impact of leaders on social work practice with children and families

Each of these focus areas were judged ‘good’, alongside the overall effectiveness judgement.

The inspection found that:

• Services have significantly improved since the council's last inspection in 2022
• Most children in Surrey receive effective and responsive help and protection
• Social workers are skilled at building relationships with children and with parents
• Most children in care live in stable homes where they thrive and make good progress. They have trusting and positive relationships with social workers
• When children are identified as being at risk of significant harm, children’s services work well and in a timely way with other agencies to reduce the risks to those children
• Personal advisers make and maintain positive relationships with care leavers
• Children’s social care services are led by an impressive, highly motivated, resilient and established leadership team. The members of this team have been relentless and successful in their quest to improve the quality and consistency of social work practice in Surrey
• Staff are well-trained and committed, feel highly valued and are proud to work in Surrey.
• The 'Leaders' vision to ensure that children have a sense of belonging and positive experiences has been embraced across the workforce at every level

The report also noted that leaders understand the priorities moving forward. These include:

• Continuing with the implementation of the sufficiency strategy
• Continuing with a recruitment strategy to appoint more permanent staff
• Increasing housing choice for care leavers
• Increasing the numbers of care leavers who are in education, training or employment
• Strengthening the consistency of approach to children at risk of exploitation.

Find the full report on Ofsted’s website.