Protecting county's children

Annual reports on fostering and adoption went before last week’s meeting of the county council’s family and children’s services scrutiny committee.

It follows an Ofsted rating of ‘requires improvement’ earlier this year for children’s services in the county, although adoption services were rated good.

A separate annual report from the Northumberland Safeguarding Children Board concludes that ‘the Board, through its partners, has delivered a strong, effective and challenging programme of work designed to consistently and continuously improve what it is like to be a child growing up in Northumberland’.

It adds: ‘The greatest challenge of all is maintaining progress, in a challenging and changing public-sector environment, through a time of policy changes and new national priorities without losing sight of what matters – the children and young people of the county’.