Solihull's Inadequate Inspection of Local Authority Children's Services (ILACS) in late 2022 was a massive wake up call for the council.
The Ofsted report was an uncomfortable read, but the biggest criticism was that we did not know ourselves and that the outcome had been a surprise to us.
The secretary of state for education issued us with a statutory direction for improving children's services and appointed Sir Alan Wood as our children's services commissioner.
He was given wide-ranging powers which included ‘to issue any necessary instructions to the council for the purpose of securing immediate improvement in the delivery of children's social care and partnership working'.
Sir Alan joined us at the same time as I had become acting chief executive. His expectations were clear – focus, pace and for those accountable to lead and be visible.
Due to an earlier improvement notice, the council already had an improvement board in place.
Sir Alan and I attended our first meeting in November 2022. There were more than 20 people around the table who were presented with an improvement plan that ran to some 80 pages.
There was much to do and people wanted to make sure nothing was missed. But this meant nothing was being done well or quickly.
One of the major benefits of having BCT as our partner is that when introducing, for example, new family group conferencing and edge of care services, we have been able to link into services that BCT already had and then transition to our own services. This has enabled changes to be made at pace and, importantly, for Department for Education project funding to be spent within timescales.
After that meeting, Sir Alan and I stood down those arrangements immediately. He educated me on the requirements of Working Together, the Government's statutory guidance to safeguard children – I'm an accountant by background – and we agreed that the chief executive of Birmingham & Solihull Integrated Care Board (ICB), the chief constable of the West Midlands Police and I would lead the improvement plan from that point on.
We also agreed that our political and board leaders – the leader of the council, chair of the ICB and the police and crime commissioner – should have oversight of the improvement priorities. This arrangement has been in place ever since.
By March 2023, Sir Alan had made his recommendations to the secretary of state on the model for improving children's services in Solihull. As part of this, Birmingham Children's Trust (BCT) was appointed as our improvement partner for up to three years, with the arrangement starting immediately.
In the early days, there was some tension between my children's team and the BCT team, but the arrangement soon found its place.
BCT has added enormous value over the nearly three years it has worked with us and we could not have got to where we are without it.
The council had disinvested in early help some years ago and a key part of our new improvement plan has been to rebuild this.
One of the major benefits of having BCT as our partner is that when introducing, for example, new family group conferencing and edge of care services, we have been able to link into services that BCT already had and then transition to our own services. This has enabled changes to be made at pace and, importantly, for Department for Education project funding to be spent within timescales.
The rate of improvement has been a constant theme of discussion with our commissioner and we have had to make senior management changes along the way.
We were very fortunate to have Beate Wagner working with us as our scrutineer for the Safeguarding Children's Partnership and, in late 2023, Beate agreed to join us as our interim director of children's services.
Beate had previously delivered amazing results in Wakefield and started to make a difference immediately. She has now left us, but handed the baton over to Rasheed Pendry in August last year.
We have also made significant changes to our workforce offer. Solihull is now a place where social workers want to come and work.
At the time of our November 2022 ILACS, our agency staff rate was around 50%. It is now less than 15% and reducing all the time.
Our politicians have been great in showing their commitment to the improvement we needed to make. They declared improving children's services as the council's top priority and also agreed to significant financial investment in difficult times. When the portfolio holder for children's services became the leader in May 2025, she retained the children's portfolio, honouring the commitment to this being the top priority.
I want to mention the partners and advisers who, in my 44 years in local government, have shown one of the best examples I have experienced of the public sector working together to improve the lives of children.
Claire Burgess and Philip Simpkins of the Local Government Association advised us on improvement, governance and resources in the early days.
David Melbourne, chief executive of Birmingham & Solihull ICB and Jennifer Mattinson, assistant chief constable from the West Midlands Police have attended pretty much every partnership board meeting and have helped to drive improvement.
Barriers have been unblocked quickly, partnership buy-in to the changes we needed to make has been secured. We were thrilled to get ‘Good' in our latest ILACS inspection but, as always, we know that there is still lots to do.
Paul Johnson is chief executive, Solihull MBC
