Following our recent consultation, we will take forward proposals allowing local authorities to delegate some decision making and tasks around children in care and care leavers to external social work providers. We plan to use existing legislation to let local authorities who are already using external providers to continue to do so, which will give local authorities greater flexibility around how to look after children in their care.
We also plan to amend legislation so that social work providers do not need to register with and be inspected separately by Ofsted. Ofsted will instead consider the experiences of children receiving services under delegated arrangements as part of their new inspection framework.
We intend to make this change through a legislative reform order. You can see the explanatory documentation for the reform order on the department’s e-consultations web pages.
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