Ofsted Chief Inspector questioned by Education Committee over abuse uncovered at three Doncaster children’s homes

Last week, education committee members including Don Valley MP Nick Fletcher questioned Ofsted Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman about the organisation’s responsibilities as a regulatory body.

It comes after a complex investigation of the Hesley Group of care homes in Doncaster for children with severe mental and physical disabilities.

The investigation found that around 100 children were subjected to systematic verbal and physical abuse by staff at the homes.

Education regulatory body Ofsted had been alerted 40 times about incidents at the homes, yet gave each a “Good” ranking upon inspection.

During last week’s education committee session, topics were discussed such as the supply and quality of places in children’s homes, the shortage of social workers and the increased costs of funding social care.

Mr Fletcher then questioned Ms Spielman on Ofsted’s failings to pick up on widespread abuse at the Hesley Group homes.

He asked: “How do you explain these serious oversights in safeguarding children within those settings?”

Ms Spielman responded: “The system clearly didn’t work as well as it should, so there are lessons for all the agencies involved, including Ofsted.

"The covid shutdown was a contributory factor, but only a contributory factor; some of those eyes were taken off children.

"It is also a clear example of a case where management integrity had gone. There was deliberate concealment of substantial amounts of information.

“There was a great deal of information that we should have had but that was withheld; that would have changed our risk assessment and our likely action.

"That failure of integrity, the poor flow of information to us, the suspension of routine inspection by government because of covid, and the loss of other lines of sight, meant that we were slower than we should have been to pick that up.”

When asked how notifications of abuse backdating to 2015 did not trigger an investigation sooner, she responded: “A normal pattern of notifications would have anything up to a couple of hundred notifications a year of concerns as normal for an institution of that size, including quite a number of serious incidents.

"Case by case, as far as we can tell, we followed up on every incident.

“This is the normal pattern in relation to a huge proportion of these notifications: you check, and the leaders have done the right thing in relation to them.

“We do not visit every children’s home dozens of times a year every time there is a notification.”

She continued to discuss the “closed culture” of the homes, meaning that staff were less likely to whistleblow, as well as many of the children being unable to communicate abuse to authorities or their parents due to verbal issues.

The Hesley Group inquiry is still ongoing, with South Yorkshire Police also in the process of its own investigation.