The fostering service in Dundee has been told by Care Inspectors that more must be done to bring the service up to the required standard.
Although the service was graded as “adequate” in all three categories in a Care Inspectorate report in June, two requirements were made of the service by the inspectors.
That followed a damning Care Inspectorate report the previous month, which graded the service’s quality of care and support “unsatisfactory,” its quality of staffing “weak” and its quality of management and leadership “unsatisfactory”, and made five requirements of the service.
In the latter report, the city council-run service was told it “must ensure that foster carers have the necessary skills and attitudes to ensure that children in their care are treated withdignity” and that “foster carers have the necessary skills to care for children who have been the subject of abuse and neglect”.
The city council’s director of social work, Jennifer Tocher, now says the service has made “significant progress”since but accepts more is needed to be done to fully complete the action plan put in place after the initial report.
Inspectors swooped on the service in April following two complaints, one by a foster carer in May 2013 and a second one by a service user to the family placement team and the Care Inspectorate in January this year.
The resulting report in May concluded that the service had failed to meet national standards by failing to hold a review within reasonable time; and a complaint had not been responded to within the required timescales.
As such the unsatisfactory and weak gradings were awarded.
An action plan was put in place by the council to address the five requirements but two of those remain to be fulfilled, the follow-up report by inspectors revealed.
Ms Tocher’s report is due to go before councillors on the social work committee on Monday.