Care Inspectorate Wales concludes assurance check of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council children's services

This assessed the local authority's performance in exercising its duties and functions in line with legislation.

We found Children’s Services show strong, child‑centred practice, effective early help and safeguarding arrangements, underpinned by supportive leadership. While recording, clearer analysis of harm and improved communication with families need strengthening, Children’s Services shows strong foundations and effective practice across key areas.

Key strengths identified

Leadership is visible and compassionate, underpinned by a clear practice framework and workforce development strategy. This is supporting workforce confidence and resilience.

The workforce is skilled and well supported, reinforcing a culture where practitioners are valued and their professional judgement trusted.

Children's voices are prioritised and well reflected in practice, with strong examples of children's views meaningfully informing assessments, safeguarding activity and care planning. Practitioners use a range of relationship-based and direct work tools effectively to support genuine, child-centred engagement.

There is a strong service-wide commitment to prevention and early help, underpinned by established pathways such as Families First and Flying Start. Prompt responses to new referrals and timely assessments help minimise delay and identify need early, with young carers and their families feeling listened to and supported.

Safeguarding arrangements are effective, supported by clear governance, quality assurance and strong multi-agency working. Practitioners demonstrate confidence in managing complex risk, and children describe interactions with professionals as reassuring and proportionate.

Partnership working is strong, underpinned by a collaborative and transparent approach. Effective co-production with families at an individual level supports shared ownership and meaningful involvement in planning and decision-making.

Areas for improvement

Despite these strengths, we also found areas for improvement.

Records do not consistently show reflective analysis, professional judgement or children’s voices, particularly early in involvement. Advocacy offers and refusal reasons are not always recorded, and communication with families at key transition points needs strengthening. 

Workforce pressures, linked to demand and complexity, pose risks to wellbeing and resilience. This reinforces the need for ongoing, proactive oversight of capacity and workloads. 

Some safeguarding records lack clear, specific and time‑bound actions. Delays in external services can also affect timeliness, highlighting the importance of robust monitoring of partner‑related delays. 

Delays in follow‑on support available to families following step-down from statutory intervention can undermine early‑help effectiveness. Multi‑agency working and consistent threshold application across partners also require further strengthening.

Whilst co-production with families is effective at an individual level, learning from lived experience and complaints is not consistently used to inform wider service development. Placement sufficiency pressures continue and need maintained oversight to ensure stable, suitable local placements.

Next steps

We expect the local authority to consider the areas identified for improvement and take appropriate action to address them. We will monitor progress through our ongoing performance review activity with the local authority.

Where relevant, we expect the local authority to share the positive practice identified with other local authorities, to disseminate learning and help drive continuous improvement in statutory services throughout Wales.

The assurance check follows the statutory responsibilities outlined in the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and helps determine how effectively local authorities support and sustain improvements for people and services.