THE Department for Education (DfE) is “comfortable” with progress being made by St Helens Council after Ofsted shed light on failings within children’s services, the leader of the council has said.

Council chiefs have received feedback on the action plan submitted to Ofsted following its focus visit findings, which deemed that children were placed at “significant risk of harm”.

One of the actions is to conduct a full Local Government Association (LGA) peer review, which the plan says will bring “further, constructive external scrutiny and learning and action”.

Sue Forster, the council’s director of Public Health, provided an update on the progress of the action plan to the People’s Board on Wednesday.

She told partners the DfE is “assured” the action being taken by the authority and its engagement with the LGA is “really positive”.

Ms Forster added that Ofsted are also “relatively assured” by the action plan.

She added: “I expect there may be further Ofsted inspections moving forward that might impact on other partners.”

Last week, cabinet approved the use of council reserves to implement some of the improvements set out in the draft action plan.

Cllr Joe Pearson, cabinet member for developing young people, revealed that a meeting was held with representatives from DfE last week.

The Labour councillor said the council’s response was met “positively”.

Cllr Pearson said: “We’re confident we can deliver on that action plan, although there is a lot of very hard work to be done.”

Council leader Derek Long said the DfE are “conformable” with the progress being made in response to Ofsted’s findings.

Cllr Long, who is also the chairman of the People’s Board, stressed the importance of “getting it right” and said a long-term solution will be delivered.

Geoffrey Appleton, vice chairman of the People’s Board and chairman of St Helens CCG, said it is in all of the partners’ best interests to make the improvements required.

Cllr Long added that the council’s struggles within social services was not unique to St Helens.

He pointed to a special BBC report on the Sunday Politics Show over the weekend regarding the state of children’s services in the North West.

Cllr Long said: “My recollection was, 20 out of 23 North West local authorities, social services authorities, had over spent in terms of children’s services.

“So that indicates something occurring beyond St Helens which is a national concern. It’s particularly in the North West.”

Cllr Long added that the number of looked after children has also increased significantly nationally.

In St Helens, there were 449 looked after children at the end of July 2018, according to the council’s latest budget and performance monitoring report.

This is placing a pressure of £4.2 million on the authority in respect of fostering and residential care costs for looked after children.

In addition, it is placing a pressure on the council of £237,000 relating to family support packages.

Cabinet has previously approved the use of £2 million from the children’s services reserve in 2018-19 to help mitigate the impact of these financial pressures.

Cllr Long added: “It just gives an indication there is something going on with our engagement as the public sector with our children and we need to make sure we understand, and we accommodate the changes and pressures the demand is creating for all of us round the table.

“And clearly in those circumstances then obviously we need to be thinking about how we deliver our services.”

During the meeting, the board approved the St Helens Description of Need Document, which updates and brings together the 2014 Thresholds of Need and Continuum of Need Documents.

The document will launch at the end of September and will be adopted within partner organisations.