Welcome to this public evidence session of the Education Select Committee. This is the third evidence session in our inquiry on early years. Before I invite our witnesses this morning to introduce yourselves to us, I would like to say a couple of things about today’s session. As a Committee, we know what parents and carers also know, which is that right across the country there are early years practitioners who do a fantastic job every single day to provide safe, secure, nurturing care for the youngest children in early years settings, and we pay tribute to them. We have also, as a Committee, been alarmed by the number of cases that we have seen going through the courts in recent months, which have involved the most horrific abuse of children in early years settings, where parents and carers have entrusted their precious young children into the care of an early years setting and they have faced unimaginable trauma as a consequence of doing so. We are holding this session today to look specifically at the safeguarding frameworks and arrangements that sit around the early years, and to explore with you whether any changes are needed to prevent the kinds of cases that we have seen going through the courts in recent months from happening to other families. We are doing that knowing that there are a couple of cases at the moment that are still in the judicial process and that fall within the sub judice rules. That means that we cannot refer to them directly in any way that could prejudice the proceedings of the court, so we would ask for your help and co-operation in doing that. However, there is much that we can draw on from other cases that have already concluded and from the themes that give rise to the concerns that we have about some of the safeguarding practices and processes in the early years and the important question of how to keep the youngest children safe and that is what we are here to do today. Before we begin our questioning, can I invite all of our witnesses to introduce yourselves to us, please, starting with Clare Roberts?

Hi, I am Clare Roberts. I am founder and chief exec of Kids Planet Nursery Group. I started the company 18 years ago when my oldest daughter was a baby. I now look after 271 nurseries across England and Wales. I also represent the National Partnership of Early Learning and Child Care, which comprises 10 of the largest group providers who are helping to support on strategy in the early years long term.

My name is Claire Reid, and I am children’s services director for the Early Years Alliance. I am directly responsible for our portfolio of settings and the Early Years Alliance is one of the largest representative organisations for the early years sector.

I am Mike Short. I am the head of education at UNISON, the trade union. We represent around 50,000 early years workers as well as several hundred Ofsted inspectors working in early years settings.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Jayne Coward. I am deputy director for early years regulatory policy and practice in Ofsted. My responsibilities are around the effective regulation of childcare providers across England.

Good morning. My name is Ann Graham. I am here as the vice president for the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. My day job is as director of children’s services for the London Borough of Haringey.

Thank you very much indeed. I will begin our questioning with an open question for each of you to answer. Would you agree that there is an operational gap between the statutory safeguarding framework and day-to-day practice in some early years settings? From the perspective of your organisation—we have different perspectives at the table—what action is your organisation doing to close any gap? We might start with you, Clare Roberts.

Yes, of course. There is a risk that there could be a gap in some settings. Obviously, we do everything within early years and within our settings to close that gap every day and—speaking as a large provider—that is done through training, policies, procedures, inductions, and everything that we do to support our colleagues every single day. We recognise that it is more challenging for smaller providers or childminders to do the things that we as a large organisation can do and that poses challenges for some of them and how they can operate day-to-day.

We talk constantly within our settings about having a culture of safeguarding, and that is absolutely essential. We have regulations, but it is actually what happens day to day in the settings that is vital. We offer our members a wide range of safeguarding training. We constantly talk and share, and we make sure that members are aware of any regulatory changes and also that they have access to the support that they need.

Yes, I think there is a gap. We are a trade union, not a provider. One of the main things that we do is represent our members. We provide a voice for them, especially those who are in restricted jobs and so on who perhaps do not feel able to speak up for themselves. We spend a lot of time campaigning for and working with employers to improve the quality of training, because that is a big issue and it is about not just the quality of training, but the availability of training. We also campaign for there to be proper funding for that training and for early years in general because there is not enough. Another important thing we do is provide a way for early years workers to feel safe when they are whistleblowing about concerns. That is quite an isolating, lonely position to be in and being in a trade union is an important part of being able to speak up.

From our work in Ofsted, we would say that the overwhelming majority of early years settings are safe and are delivered by passionate early years workers who want to deliver the best for the children in their care. As a regulator, Ofsted has a key role to play. We know from our evidence that where it works well it relies on those systems working together, having an open and honest safeguarding culture, which Claire referenced before, and it is about staff being vigilant and being the voice for children, particularly the youngest children who cannot speak for themselves. As you know, the DfE sets the minimum requirements that are set out in the EYFS, and we are charged with inspecting and regulating against those standards. In terms of our role, we are there to drive that quality and to ensure continuous improvement. We do that through identifying strengths in what we see, but also by identifying areas where practice falls below those requirements. We also have a range of regulatory powers that we can use where practice falls below expected standards: raising actions, issuing welfare requirements, notices, or suspending or cancelling providers in the most severe of cases. In those situations where there is a gap, we have a real role and responsibility to use our insights and evidence to work closely with DfE, which sets those requirements. We use evidence and analysis to drive improvements to strengthen the EYFS. Some of the requirements in the EYFS that were changed in September 2025 came from that advice and co-operative working with the DfE, so there is a real role for us to use our insights and work with DfE where we identify that there are patterns or areas that need to be strengthened.

I want to pick up on where you started, saying that many in the sector do a good job every day. The standards and regulations are there but it requires scrutiny, consistency, oversight and vigilance to make sure that everybody is following that guidance as closely as they can. That can only be done with consistent oversight, scrutiny, through all means, on a daily basis in each of the settings. There is training there, but it would be helpful if some of it was more routine so that we can be sure that people are receiving regular training, even though it is a reminder. We also have learning processes, so that when things sadly do not go as we would like them to, there is a learning culture that we need to keep going. One gap might be that if there is an incident somewhere in one part of the country, gathering the learning quickly for another part of the country might not be as strong as it could be and might routinely be left to the individual.

Thank you. I have a couple of questions about the process of vetting staff to work in early years settings. There are inconsistencies at the moment in the DBS and barred list requirements across different types of early years providers. Would you agree that the highest level of criminal record and barred list checking should be applied universally across all settings? Jayne, do you want to start?

Yes. In terms of staff suitability, one of our key functions is around registration and ensuring the suitability of nominated individuals, committee members and, with domestic childcare, childminders, and so on, all those who live and work in the house who are aged 16 and above. The law states that everybody needs to have a DBS check and we would like to see that made mandatory through the Disclosure and Barring Service because at the moment the DBS is only as good as the day it is printed, and then we are relying on that self-notification when something changes in a person’s life. I think it would close that gap and give more security if signing up to the checking service was mandatory. I appreciate that a cost comes along with that, but I think it would strengthen the DBS checking process because those providers would get that up-to-date information.

Does anyone else want to come in?

I think the most important part is that the DBS is only the first layer and, as Jayne touched on, DBS is only useful if it identifies someone who has done something wrong. We need to make sure that providers are all clear that that is the baseline and that ongoing monitoring, mentoring, observations and all those things that happen practically within settings every day are fundamental to protect children. I think that is a really important thing for everyone to remember.

Yes, it is vital to have that robust starting point with the recruitment and selection of candidates, but then it is the ongoing training, supervision and observation of those candidates that is important and, as you said, the whistleblowing and making sure that staff are supported to do that.

Anyone else?

It is a spot check in time, and I think the sector should not rely on that as a comfort. It is a first spot check in time. We know that when we speak with the police—should there be, say, a section 47 strategy meeting—that there might be other information, soft information that the police hold that is not available through a DBS. I think we just need to know that it is one tool. It is not a comfort blanket. We still need to be sure that we monitor the culture and are vigilant all the time.

As you said, Clare, the DBS is there to monitor and check people who already have a conviction, but, in the cases that we can all think of that have been in the media in recent months, the offender did not previously have a conviction. Therefore, I want to ask about the process of taking up references. Do think it would be helpful if there was more obligation in that process and a duty of candour on previous employers providing references, to disclose whether there has been any cause for concern about a person’s suitability to work with small children at that stage? In some of the cases that we can think of that have been in the media in recent weeks, the perpetrator had a long history of working in a variety of different settings. One can imagine that it is completely possible that other colleagues in previous settings might have had concerns about that individual. Currently, there is no obligation on an employer who is providing a reference to disclose that at the point when their employee is applying for a new job. Might there be any helpful changes that could be made in relation to referencing? I would welcome your thoughts on that.

I think people are frightened of giving references, which is absolutely ridiculous and they should be totally transparent. We ask with every reference whether there are any safeguarding concerns about an individual. Lots of people do come forward and share concerns, and obviously that is your job to explore. However, I think there should be something that is done more widely to make people not be frightened to share those concerns and to be confident speaking up, because that is the only way we have an open culture on safeguarding.

What would that look like? What would give people confidence that, if they were candid in a reference, there would not be any comeback?

I think people worry that they are going to be sued for these things and that someone is going to take them to court. If you had low-level concerns about someone, you should be confident in being able to speak up about those things. Obviously, with the way the law stands at the moment, some people are apprehensive about doing that—but actually, if you want to put children first, that is what we should be doing in these situations.

Thank you. Does anyone else want to come in?

Yes, just to comment on what Clare said, I think safeguarding is everybody’s business. It takes clear information sharing to enable us to keep children safe. We need to keep in the forefront of our minds that it is about the safety and wellbeing of children. We welcomed the strengthening of some of the reference stuff in the EYFS in September, but we need to make sure we put the children front and centre and it relies on a community of us all working together to do that.

We would all welcome a strengthening of the reference taking process. However, we know that one of the reasons that it does not work more openly is because people have been falsely accused and that there is opinion and judgment about an individual where there may be a personality clash or something like that. We should be mindful of those instances and, of course, we are mindful all the time about disproportionality and how some of these things play out in practice. Those are some of the reasons behind a closing down of reference taking, not just in this sector, but across the field.

Before I go to my question about identifying these safeguarding issues, can I just ask the panel how confident you are in the ability of large multi-site chain nurseries, where there may be 100, 200 or 300 sites, to effectively monitor and implement safeguarding policies?

As a large group provider, I would ask how that is any different from being a single setting. Leaders have responsibility. When we started, I had one nursery. Our managers have responsibilities in equal measure.

But, if you will allow me, you would have had a bespoke safeguarding policy for that setting.

Yes, okay. We work across 70 local authorities and there are different safeguarding thresholds for each of those local authorities, so, as an organisation, we go with the lowest common denominator. Rather than having to adapt policies for each different local authority, we make sure that our threshold covers the lowest level. Does that make sense? It is so that we are clear about what we are doing. In a group operation, if everyone had different safeguarding policies, it would not work and would not be effective. However, it does mean that we can make sure that we are monitoring. As a group, what makes it easier is we have resource to monitor, spot check, and do all those things on a larger-scale level. As a single setting provider, you are the only person that responsibility sits with. We have the benefit of a head office team to monitor and make sure that everything is being done correctly all the time. We have our own internal training team as an organisation, so we are able to invest in that training, be it online, be it face to face, in a different way from in a single setting. It used to be that local authorities had the resource and ability to provide a lot more of that training. Certainly, 18 years ago that was the case, but it is not the case anymore. What we have looked to do as an organisation is, as some of those supports have gone, to implement them ourselves as we have scaled.

One of the challenges is that local authorities have different thresholds for safeguarding. They have a different language for what they call their processes and that can make it very difficult for staff. You might have a member of staff saying, “Well, in my area, that would not meet the threshold”, and another member of staff in another area saying, “Well, actually, I think that is something we should refer”. That does make it quite challenging for people on the ground to know what the expectations are. I agree about the training. In the past, the local authority would offer free safeguarding training, and it would be very clear that that was a requirement. I do not think there is any lack of willingness in providers to attend that training, but practically it can be very difficult to get on the training. I think training should be available and a requirement that people are able to attend at low or no cost to the provider.

Would you say that there is a genuine culture of reporting within earlier settings, where staff at all levels feel confident that safeguarding concerns will be taken seriously and acted upon? What evidence do you have that staff feel listened to when there are issues? I will start with Mike, please.

If I may, can I make a couple of comments on the previous question before I lose it as well?

Yes.

I support some elements. We have two people with the same first name, Clare, and Claire, to the left, and I refer to what Clare Roberts said about the lack of capacity in local authorities to drive training. There is also an issue in the private sector emanating from low-pay conditions. We see something like a 16% turnover of staff compared with a much lower turnover in maintained settings. There is an obvious problem there with training, because the more turnover of staff, the more training needs to be provided. If the training is not there, I think it becomes a bigger problem in the private sector. I wanted to mention that first. I am sorry, but would you mind repeating your question?

Would you say that there is a genuine culture of reporting within earlier settings where staff at all levels feel confident that safeguarding concerns will be taken seriously and acted upon? What evidence do you have, if any, that staff feel listened to when they raise issues?

The picture is mixed. We carried out a survey of our members in early years settings at the beginning of this year. One of the things we asked was, “If you had a safeguarding concern regarding the conduct of a colleague or a manager, would you feel comfortable raising it?”. Just to give you a flavour of the comments, one person said, “Not without a union—”—I think they said “union member”, but I think they meant union rep—“next to me”. In any meeting with senior leaders, there are often two or three. Others were saying there is a lack of structure, trustees and chairs to speak to, and others felt that it would not always be taken seriously. There is a concern about low pay as well. Apologies, I will probably keep going back to low pay and the lack of job security. People do feel vulnerable about raising things if they are not going to be taken seriously. They are still there. They have raised it. They are going to feel unsettled by that. Based on the responses to our survey, I would say that is quite common among our members.

Thank you. Anyone else on the panel?

We have certainly seen an increase in the number of notifications that we receive from providers or about providers. Ofsted received about 21,000 notifications in the 2023-24 reporting year, and an increasing number of those are from staff, which would indicate that there is some confidence among them in reporting. Going back to what I said before, we are absolutely part of a wider system that is designed to make early years settings safe, so things that can build staff confidence to do that are really important. Also, to go back to what Claire said, we can do safeguarding training, but then it is also about looking at the impact of training on the ground. Staff can tell you all they have learned in training, but the confidence to put it into practice is something else to be mindful of.

I want to come back to the point about the local authority providing training. I think we are living in a context now where we know that local authorities are short of money, and from where I sit that is not going to improve any time soon, so we need the private sector to take account of training for their staff. Of course, if there is free training available, we would want to share that out, but I do not think that in years to come the local authority will have the resources that were referred to earlier. Safeguarding is everybody’s business, and that includes employing staff and being sure that staff are properly trained. It is not what we want—we would want to be able to provide training for all—but the money is not there.

The most important thing is that people know the different channels to be able to report their concerns. In our organisation, we have flowcharts available in every single room for all the team members, giving the contact details for me, our COO and all our childcare directors across the business, as well as who the DSLs are within their settings. Making channels available so that people feel able to speak up and to recognise that safeguarding is part of your culture and your DNA is ultimately what should be happening in early years. As a growing group, we acquire many settings that are single settings or smaller groups. I am sure Jayne could comment on the number of notifications that our organisation makes to Ofsted on a weekly basis about some of the settings that we acquire that might never have made referrals. My experience is that we all live in the real world, that things always happen in any business; it does not mean that anything has gone wrong, but your duty is to follow your legal responsibilities. Therefore, I think sometimes we have to look at whether everyone understands that and does not feel that there will be ramifications for raising concerns and speaking up. We also have anonymous channels for colleagues who for whatever reason are really uncomfortable. We encourage them to speak up first and to recognise that, but it is about providing different channels to make sure that they can do that in a safe space.

The data for the local authority designated officers to whom we would report a concern about a member of staff shows that the number of referrals to them has increased. This is not just specific to early years, but it has increased by 40% recently. Therefore, I do think there is a culture of reporting but we find that when we make those referrals, there different responses from different LADOs as to what they accept in terms of their thresholds. It would be useful to draw some of that data together nationally to see what the picture is, just to make sure that we are on board with that. I do think that settings have a concern, if they make a notification to Ofsted or to the LADO, about what the repercussions might be. There probably needs to be some more knowledge raising about what happens as a next step because, if you are a provider that has never made a referral, it can seem like an enormous thing, rather than an opportunity to share your concerns and discuss with another professional what the next steps could be.

I totally agree with Claire. I think that is a really important point. Speaking from an Ofsted perspective, I think sometimes there is a fear of making that notification because of what the next step might be for you as a provider. We have done some blogs to try to allay those fears and demystify the process, but I think that is an important point.

I should declare that I am a member of UNISON. Jayne, we just heard how important it is that providers are notifying safeguarding concerns, because it signifies that they take safeguarding seriously. Does Ofsted track and look into any providers where there are no safeguarding flags being raised? Is that a warning sign for you that something needs to be looked into?

We have various systems to track notifications and what those tell us, but I think we could do more in that space with providers from whom we have had no notifications. We approach our work on a risk-based, proportionate basis. It is a matter for resources. Where we know something is going wrong or we suspect something is going wrong, those are the providers that we go out to visit, but I do think it is important for us to also look at where we do not get any notifications.

I guess I would gently say that you know something is going wrong when you are not getting any notifications because, as we have just heard quite rightly pointed out, things always happen and safeguarding is not about preventing stuff happening; it is about stepping in when something does happen.

Yes, I totally accept what Clare said on that. It is a good point. When we go out to do our inspections, we are looking at understanding of safeguarding, and that is including conversations about things that might have happened within the setting, whether they have been notified to Ofsted. Absolutely, as part of our inspection methodology, it is something we look at when we are there on inspection. Similarly, if we are going out to do regulatory visits, those are questions and so on that inspectors would take into account. However, if we are stepping back and looking more holistically, routinely, maybe there is more we could do to look at those providers where we do not get any notifications.

My question is for Mike and Claire; Clare, you can come in, but you have already answered part of this question. What mechanisms exist to protect staff from feeling intimidated or discouraged when reporting concerns when whistleblowing, and how well do these work in practice?

The first thing is having decent policy and procedures in place. I know that sounds obvious, but lots of employers do not have that. I mean an effective whistle-blowing policy that has been negotiated with a recognised trade union. That gives rise to a second point, which is that in a lot of employers there is not a recognised trade union. There might be some workers who are a member of a trade union, but having recognised unions is really important. From our point of view, it is important for members to have a voice, but I think that more importantly in this context, it is an important way for staff to feel secure and protected. That is obviously only part of it, and I am not trying to suggest that the process of looking after staff should be outsourced from the employer to the trade union, but it enables us to work with the employer to ensure that that sort of culture is there. It is not easy to change cultures in organisations where people feel afraid. I think listening to staff and working together is probably the nub of it, to be honest.

It goes back to having that culture of safeguarding whether staff feel confident to raise things. You can have very strong policies and procedures and, absolutely, they are your starting point, but unless staff feel that they are going to be supported when they make a disclosure, they are going to be very reluctant to do so. Therefore, it is important that that leadership within a setting is closely scrutinised when we are inspected to make sure that that culture is there and is present in the setting. Staff may often choose to leave rather than make a disclosure if they feel it would be to their detriment to raise a concern, particularly when they are going to be looking for other work in other settings.

It is really important, though, that all colleagues know that it is their duty of care to raise and whistleblow safeguarding concerns in rooms and settings. Managers can monitor and do lots of things, but they are not the eyes and ears in that room. We make sure that all our team are fully aware that the responsibility lies with them, just as much as it does with us as leaders to make sure we are supporting them. That is where you have to have a culture of safeguarding that everyone gets and understands that you are going to do the best thing all the time. I would rather people brought things up all the time that were utter nonsense, but you have a whole open culture there. That is what it should be, and no one should ever be made to feel as though what they have said is not valid, because of course it is.

I do think there were changes within the Early Years Foundation stage to draw attention to whistleblowing, but I am not sure that that was promoted quite as much as the other changes. Therefore, there could be some more work around that.

I have a final point as well. As an organisation, we are not in settings all the time, so that notification and confidence of staff to notify is really important as well.

I will ask Claire Reid this question and then open it up to the panel. Could you walk the Committee through how information about safeguarding concerns is currently shared between early years providers, health services, local authorities and safeguarding partners and, in practice, who initiates information sharing and what does that process look like on the frontline?

Early years has an important role in safeguarding, often being the people who see children on a daily basis that nobody else sees. It is important that our staff are confident to make referrals and have those relationships with health. I think through our training we are, but one of the things that we have to talk to our colleagues about is, “Remember that you are just as important as that social worker. You are just as knowledgeable as that health professional”, because sometimes we don’t always feel that our information is given as much credence as perhaps other professionals, and that is really sad. We also find that if a child is already known to children’s services, for example, they might start in our setting, but we are not automatically notified. We only find out when we speak to the parent and the parent tells us. I have to say that that is a real frustration, because that is an opportunity lost. If a child is already known to children’s services or a health professional has a concern for them, for that not to be shared with us creates a gap within the system that I think is quite challenging. Often we will work closely with health to support us in our referrals to children’s services to give a little bit more credibility to what we are saying. I can think of a situation recently where we were concerned about a child who had previously been on child protection, who had suddenly stopped coming to our setting and we could not find out where they were. We sought advice and we got the response, “They are not at school. They do not have to come to nursery”. That is really difficult, because it not only undermines the professionalism of my colleagues, but it makes the children less safe.

The challenge is that there are inconsistencies across certain LADOs within local authorities. We have had situations where things absolutely would meet our threshold, but we have been told it does not meet theirs. It should be much clearer what a threshold is. We have had instances where they have said, “You should not be contacting us. It is your job to make those decisions”. But is an open culture of safeguarding not what we all want? There should be no deterrent. We have an organisation around our settings that can support that. However, if you are a single setting and you have referred something and you have been told, “You don’t know your responsibility”, what are you going to do next time?

It really does dent that confidence. The support services around, the early help services, have greatly reduced and that puts an awful lot of pressure on our early years staff. For example, one of my team was told, “If you are worried, you go and do a home visit”. That is a really difficult position to be put in. With the additional support around housing, debt and everything else, we are being asked to do so much and there is only so much that we can do.

I can add to Clare’s points about the different thresholds, different services and different local authorities, which I think is really well made. A lot of that is down to pressure on resources. We have seen local authorities basically raising thresholds for understandable resource reasons, but there needs to be a solution to that. We know about multi-agency settings from our members, who say they are reduced and overstretched, and that goes back to Claire’s original point. As a result, early years staff are often not treated as equal safeguarding partners, and that is the way they feel about that. A lot of it does come back down to local authority resources.

What I am hearing here across the table leads me to say that you have to build a relationship with your LADO or LADOs. People might say that that is what they have done, but if you have a concern about a child, you call your LADO or you call your safeguarding lead or you call the local authority and you build a relationship with them. In the local authority that I am in, we have an open telephone line so people can regularly call that line. We have a LADO who has been there for a long time and she is not alone. Being a LADO is one of those roles where people tend to stay because they enjoy it. They are not running out to safeguard children at the beginning or end of the day. They have a regular job. I would encourage everybody to make sure that they build relationships with the local authority, and if they are very concerned they write in and complain. I have known nurseries that have complained. Parents have complained to the local authority, and they have also complained to Ofsted. There is an obligation on the local authority to look into such situations. As we have repeatedly said around this table, safeguarding is everyone’s duty. There is always going to be an issue about thresholds. Sometimes in the local authority we receive calls with information that does not meet threshold. When there is a safeguarding concern, the local authority has an obligation through statutory guidance to respond. We will always be able to talk about the consistency of threshold, but I would not want people around this room to think that that is not something that local authorities are not inspected on. I have recently been through an inspection, and thresholds is one of the things they always look at. Sorry, Chair, I think you want to come in.

Yes, if that is okay. With your ADCS hat on, do you recognise what Clare Roberts has said, which is, “I have settings all across the country. A staff member in a setting in Haringey might phone up the LADO about a cause for concern and get one response. A staff member in a setting in another part of the country might phone the LADO about an identical set of circumstances and get a completely different response”? Do you recognise that practice is inconsistent across local authorities and that might be a problem, particularly for settings that are operating in multiple different local authority areas?

I see it as a bell curve. There will be a point at which everything is a concern, but in the margins, if a child has not turned up today, that might not be something that a local authority will respond to. However, in another local authority with a different case and a different set of contexts, where a child might be known to a local authority, a child might have been subject to a child protection plan, or there might be issues that the local authority is aware of and then—

With respect, that was exactly the example that was quoted: a child on a child protection plan, a nursery worker got in touch with the LADO because they had not seen that child for a while, and the local authority said, “That is nothing to do with us”. That would seem to be both a practice that is inconsistent—

The child had previously been on a child protection plan and had recently been stepped down.

That would seem to meet anybody’s threshold for reasonable and—

That is in working together and that is an expectation, but if the child has recently been stepped down, it is really hard to talk about the scenarios and individuals. Basically, local authorities are mandated, and it is statutory guidance to respond. There should not be such wide variation that a child at risk is not seen. However, on the margins, there might be variation. I hope I have made that clear.

Yes. Thank you.

I would like to follow up on the Chair’s point. Based on your experience and insights, what changes would make a difference in the different systems and the inconsistencies with thresholds? What important changes would bring consistency and confidence back into the early years sector?

I will go back to the start. Nursery workers and local authorities work with hundreds of thousands of children, and so I would say that when there is a concern about a child, there is consistency—[Interruption.] I am seeing nods. However, there will be a small variation—I put it that way—depending on the individual circumstances. I would not want people not to have confidence. It is really hard, because we are talking about people working with people and so I think it is on the margins, but if a child is at risk, every local authority should respond. We are inspected regularly by Ofsted, and Ofsted scrutinises—having just come out of an inspection, the scrutiny into child protection practices within local authorities is deep.

I absolutely hear what you are saying there. We do reflect when terrible things happen and we reflect on our own practice. Lessons from our reviews, which will not surprise anybody here, show that where we have that strong collaboration, we have that timely information sharing and we are able to knit all those threads together, we have a safer safeguarding culture that sits around those most vulnerable children. There is work to do around some of that cross-boundary information sharing when things go across the national picture. When we are working with the police, for example, sometimes we struggle to get information from local police forces without a disclosure application and some forces look for a fee for that, which means that while we ultimately get that information, that sometimes leads to a delay in us getting the additional information that can help us. As we have said all along, we need an open and honest safeguarding culture and those key partners working together effectively. As you all know, working together, keeping children safe in education, as statutory partners and organisations working together we should not be fearful about sharing information, but I think sometimes myths or concerns around data protection or sharing of information can sometimes blur the line, so anything we can do to give confidence and promote that the child is at the heart of this will help. We need to share that information. We all see bits of the puzzle, but, unless we work together, we do not actually see that whole picture, and I think that is really important.

The most important part is consistency. The majority of LADOs and local authorities are great, but obviously, when you cover as many local authorities as I do, you know that there are some that may not be as helpful or as knowledgeable and at times question, “Do you know your responsibility?”, which I absolutely do and which our team does. That is where you feel it is really difficult for providers if they are not getting that consistent approach to advice and support. Many single setting providers are also manager and they might be working in ratio as well. They do need support from that expert, and that is what is there to support them, but I think there must be a consistent approach. We have shared some of the examples with Ofsted to help support it with some of the challenges that we have faced because obviously, given the number of settings and children that we have, we do have more experience.

I agree about the consistency of approach and also being able to be notified directly if a child does have an allocated social worker, just to be given that information. It seems nonsensical that they are not, really.

If a child is subject to a plan, then all the people involved, all the professionals in that plan, are part of working with that plan, so I do not understand the scenario that has been put forward in that situation. If a child is subject to a child protection plan and they are attending a nursery every day, the social worker has to speak with the nursery to find out how the child is doing. The parent will also be dropping off, picking up, and so, absolutely, the nursery should know who the social worker is. People can complain to the local authority and there are processes for escalation. You can escalate in that process. I do not think anyone should sit back and be passive about something like that. I am not suggesting there is passivity, but children are at the heart of everything we do, and safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, so you build that relationship and ask why.

Do you accept that local authorities have a responsibility, not only to the individual child and the circumstances around an individual child, and any concern being raised, but also to foster a culture within which early years professionals are confident to come forward and that that should be something that LADOs actively reflect on when they are approached by nurseries? Do you accept that nobody should feel that they have done the wrong thing by raising a concern, even if that concern does not meet the threshold for further action.

I agree 100%; I agree with you entirely. If somebody has referred information and it has not met a threshold, there should be a discussion about why that is, and always encouragement to come back if things change. The quality of the relationship between one professional and another is important. I don’t think—I am hoping not—that any LADOs feel that they are fostering poor relationships, because we know that good relationships and strong communication are critical factors in keeping children safe.

In December, the Secretary of State announced that she will be appointing an expert panel to inform guidance for the sector, with effective and safe use of digital devices and CCTV for better safeguarding practices. In your opinion, how will that balance against staff accountability, children’s privacy and parental confidence?

I can only speak for us at Kids Planet. We have CCTV in all of our settings and have done for 18 years. When we acquire any settings, we implement that and put that in place. I am not saying that having CCTV is the be-all answer to all safeguarding, but I sit here with two hats on in this regard. One is obviously to protect children, but also it is to protect colleagues. There can be misunderstandings, and I hope that CCTV being present in settings provides a clear way to give a true picture of what has going on. It is a significant investment for us and an ongoing investment. It is not just a one-off cost when you put it in place; you need adequate funding within our sector to be able to do it. As a larger group we can do it, but I totally understand why many settings do not have the resources to put CCTV in because it involves ongoing maintenance costs, support and IT infrastructure. It is easier to do for a larger organisation than for a single setting that might also be a pack-away setting.

There are mixed views across the sector and concerns about cyber-security and the privacy of children, but a diverse range of types of early years settings. For example, some childminders work in forest school settings so do not have a building that the children go back to. There are questions about how CCTV would work. We know that CCTV can absolutely support staff and support investigations, but yet has not prevented some of the horrendous issues we have seen. It needs to be looked at carefully.

I agree with that entirely. Our members have very mixed views about it. CCTV can bring obvious benefits to safeguarding—you can see what has happened, and another lesser benefit, but still an important benefit, is that from our members’ point of view, if there is a completely false allegation, CCTV provides a way of showing that it is completely false, that it did not happen. On the other hand, CCTV can bring its own safeguarding concerns—misuse of the footage, risks of hacking—which are not something that I know much about, but you can see how that could happen. Footage of children could obviously be misused, aside from the day-to-day issues around privacy that you alluded to in your question, which are real as well, so that is important. There is a concern—a lesser concern than safeguarding—around micromanagement as well, being used against staff, to be honest. Ultimately, as Claire said, it is not a preventive measure. It is potentially helpful with the right safeguards in place, but it is no substitute for training and those sorts of things to prevent things happening in the first place.

Jayne and Ann, could I ask you a follow-up question about your views on the potential merits of introducing a national reporting and escalation mechanism for safeguarding concerns in early years settings. What are your views about that?

Can I just come on to the CCTV?

Yes, of course.

The quality of the equipment that is installed is important, because on too many occasions the quality of CCTV has let people down, so it can be another false sense of security. Also, CCTV, even in an indoor facility, does not cover everywhere, and people—including in schools—know where the CCTV does not reach, and those are the hidden places that people need to be aware of. We come back again to the leadership and the quality of management, scrutiny and oversight that we have mentioned before.

Similarly, I think the use of CCTV is a complex topic and there are wide-ranging views about it. We want to think about the impact on children because that is the most important thing. Obviously, a decision about introducing mandatory will be for the DfE and our role will be determined once that decision has been made. As I am sure panel members know now, we do not routinely look at CCTV and our inspectors are not investigators. They are on site for a day to look at what it is like for a child to be in that setting during the day. However, we welcome the opportunity to collaborate and work alongside DfE as part of the expert panel that has just been announced recently. Could you please repeat the second part of your question?

It was about introducing a national reporting and escalation mechanism.

For notifications?

Yes. If you are not behind the detail, that is absolutely fine.

I will own up to not being behind the detail.

That is fine.

This is an idea that some of the parents who have been directly affected by abuse, whose children have been abused in nurseries, are calling for: a national mechanism for both staff within nurseries and parents and carers to report concerns, such that there could be an overview of clusters of concerns being raised about a particular setting. You might have a threshold where lots of lower-level concerns triggered an additional inspection or investigation. You might have a situation where a single concern above a certain threshold triggered an investigation. The important thing for both ADCS and Ofsted to reflect on is that it is coming from a lack of confidence on the part of parents in the existing processes for raising concerns that there are.

Is that not what Ofsted does?

In every setting we advertise—and I am sure it is part of the requirements that we advertise—that parents can talk to Ofsted directly if they have a concern, and certainly that is on a poster in every single setting.

Without referring to specific cases, if you are a parent and your child has been abused at a nursery that has been rated good by Ofsted, you might understand why parents do not have confidence in those processes at the moment and, therefore, are calling for something else.

It will be interesting to look at that and find out more about it, because we currently hold information about all settings on a database. If we receive a concern about a provider, we will look at that concern alongside the other information that we hold. There might be other notifications that we had or regulatory events or inspections where we have gone out before. But absolutely, as part of our learning reviews where things tragically have gone wrong, we need to reflect on those processes and systems.

Can you explain why you would then get a situation where—and we will talk in the abstract—concerns have been raised with Ofsted, and no action is taken, or the inspection goes ahead as normal and concludes that that setting is a good place for children to be?

If it is helpful, I can explain the risk assessment process when information comes in, which might answer some of that. When a notification comes into us, there is a risk assessment. It comes into our ARC department. There is a risk assessment on that information. We will take into account the information that we hold already about that provider or individual setting to make a decision about whether it is for Ofsted, because some things that come in are not for us—around fees and that type of thing. If it is a lower-level concern, the risk assessment might be that we consider it at the next inspection. Where we feel that there is potentially a breach of requirements or the registered provider is not meeting requirements or the children may not be safe in that setting, it would be referred to a region for them to go out and visit. It might be a telephone regulatory event. It might be going out to visit the setting unannounced, or it might be bringing forward an inspection so that we can go out to assure ourselves that that setting is still compliant with those regulations.

I will let Ann answer and then bring Peter in.

I am not familiar with the new detail that has been proposed and sight of it would be helpful, but I am mindful that people move from site to site and so their poor practices and their abuse of children may not be located in one setting or one chain of settings. However, that does not move away from the proposal that has been suggested by parents. I understand that, and I have heard what Ofsted do. Local authorities will do something similar. If you are hearing concerns or complaints from a particular setting that heighten concern, there could be an intervention following that.

To what extent do limited resources and capacity guide the decision of what to do when a safeguarding concern is raised with you? You mentioned, for example, phone calls, and they can be very useful but also have limitations. Are you confident that you have the appropriate resources and capacity to respond appropriately to every concern raised with Ofsted?

The decisions that we make about whether to go out and visit or make a telephone regulatory event are based on the risk to children, not on the resource that we have available because the children are the most important thing. We absolutely would make sure that we put the children first in the decisions that we were making. There is always an opportunity to reflect, and we absolutely do, through our internal learning reviews. As practice evolves, we need to make sure that our systems and processes are as robust and effective as they can be, and that takes us as a reflective organisation to look at where things could be strengthened or changed. Some of that is about resource as well, but you will know that DfE is funding Ofsted to increase the frequency of our inspections. We will be moving from six to four years and going out to do our initial inspection within 18 months of registration. There will be additional resource in place to enable us to do that. However, we absolutely have to reflect on where things do not go right and make sure that we strengthen our response, processes and systems in accordance with that.

As a large group, I know how many notifications we make, how many accidents occur in our nurseries and how many serious complaints come in. We have a weekly meeting called triage that senior leaders sit on where all of those things are discussed. I think Ofsted does use that information. The percentage of unannounced inspections that took place last year was 16% across the sector. At Kids Planet—and I know that we do a lot more notifications than most—we had 42% unannounced inspections. Definitely, there is a correlation between the risk assessment being done over what notifications are coming through. I know that, and I know that the notifications we make trigger unannounced inspections, but I sit there with the confidence to think that is fine—as an organisation, that is okay. For others, they might be more nervous with the fact that they know that is what is likely to happen.

Going back to a previous answer of yours, in some ways that is the wrong way round. If you are an organisation that is taking safeguarding seriously and making lots of notifications, it is fantastic that Ofsted is responding to that.

Do you mean where are the people who do not make any notifications?

That is my point.

Exactly, and I totally agree with you. It is fine, and I welcome unannounced inspections as much as announced, but for some people, that is where they would be nervous. I am agreeing with you; I am not disagreeing.

Jayne, you have said that you have a four-yearly inspection routine for the nurseries.

We will do, from 1 April, yes.

Clare is saying that if she raises lots of safeguarding concerns, Ofsted will come and do an unannounced inspection. If you are getting notifications from parents who are concerned about a nursery process, what is the process? How long would it take Ofsted to respond to them and do an unannounced inspection? What is the threshold if you are getting phone calls from parents concerned about a setting? Does it work the same way?

We receive around 21,500 notifications a year, which we triage. Going out and doing an unannounced inspection is one option for us. Usually, if the inspection is due within the next 12 months, we would go out and do that inspection, bringing the inspection forward. We have other regulatory powers available to us. We do not always have to go out and do a full inspection; we can go out and do a regulatory visit, focusing specifically on the concern in the notification brought to us. We do have timelines for responding to notifications. I can send those details to you separately. If we say that something requires urgent regional action, the region then needs to take some action within 24 hours of receiving the notification. We track that through our internal oversight procedures, to make sure that we are doing what we say we are going to do, and we are getting out to those settings as quickly as we can. Where it is not an urgent regional action, then it is within a week of us receiving that information. Our approach is risk based. I take your point about where there are no notifications. It is a balance where we potentially know there is a risk of harm, because somebody is telling us that, to where we are not aware that there is something. We have a finite resource and number of people we can send out to do things. Our early years regulatory inspectors and senior officers work incredibly hard. There are lots of systems and processes in place to make sure that we have quality oversight, that the right decisions are made, that we take that proportionate action and that we are risk assessing effectively. We are currently looking at those risk assessment processes to see where we can strengthen things and also looking at the resourcing issue that sits around that as well, as I hope you would expect us to as a reflective organisation, particularly in light of some of the horrific cases that we have had recently.

I would like to move on to talk about workforce. We know that in some areas perhaps more than others it is difficult to recruit enough qualified, high-quality staff. I would like to look at how this impacts on robust safeguarding of children. To what extent do you think reliance on temporary and agency staff in the early years sector affects the continuity of relationships with children, the relationships between staff and children, and their safeguarding practice?

It totally affects it. We do not use agency colleagues across our organisation. The reason why we do not is because, for me, staff are the most important resource that we have for the children and having the best experiences. I sit on a recruitment call every day, along with our senior leadership team, where we talk about priorities for vacancies across our organisation. We talk about needs and how we support them. Our central support team were early years leaders or educators previously, so they understand deployment grids, ratios and so on, and are able to support our nurseries. We have our own supply teams who choose to work as supply workers. Because we are a group, we are able to cluster colleagues who move around to support our nurseries. That is what the benefit of being a larger organisation enables us to do. If I was a single setting, I would not be able to do that. I come to this from a place of having worked as a manager in a single setting, and having had an organisation that has scaled up, so I understand what is best for the children and the colleagues working in the room. If you bring people in who do not know your policies and procedures, and do not know the children, how is that going to be the best experience for the children you are looking after? How is that going to be the best environment for children to flourish and meet those important milestones?

I would agree; it makes it much harder in terms of the training and culture. To be able to blow the whistle, you need to know your colleagues. You have to remember that we are looking after our youngest children that are the most vulnerable and often not verbal. Knowing those children well—their cues and ways of communicating—to be able to pick up those concerns, and being able to tune into the children is vital. If you are new to the setting, with the best will in the world, you will not know that child as well. That does create a lot of challenges.

I agree with that has been said. I will start by saying this is no criticism of people who, for legitimate reasons, choose to take on that temporary worker or supply role and that sort of thing. For the workplace, the employer and the safeguarding culture, and the general workplace culture, it is much more difficult if you have a higher turnover of staff. There is high turnover of staff in early years, particularly in the private sector, and it does make it difficult to get the right culture in place. It is hard to effectively and regularly train staff, because that relationship with the supervisor and manager cannot develop if people are coming and going. It also means that you have to provide more training, because there are more people to train. It is more of a resource issue as well for safeguarding. I cannot answer the question without talking about pay as well. The early years sector is low paid. In our last survey, one in nine of our members who work in early years said that they have relied on a food bank in the previous 12 months. There is a strong incentive for people to leave the sector, especially if it is a difficult place to work. It is rewarding but difficult. The pay is low. For a lot of people, it is a case of, “I can earn more working in Sainsburys”, or something like that—again, no criticism of that as a job, but it is difficult in a low-paid sector to develop the right workplace culture, train people, get people working together and feeling confident about the policies and procedures.

It is a lot of responsibility for such a low-paid job.

Absolutely.

Enormous.

The stress that comes with that is another thing. It is not just, “I am not paid enough; I am going to leave”. The combination of low pay and responsibility causes a lot of stress. For a lot of people, there is a shelf life to how long they can carry on doing that.

It is also about benefits. In some other organisations, often you may find that people in early years only get the minimum statutory annual leave entitlement. It is a demanding job and they have to work incredibly hard. One of the things that we do as an organisation is invest in our benefits to support colleagues. We went to colleagues to ask them what they wanted us to invest in to strengthen that offering for them, because they do need to have some rest time away from work. Having more than the minimum 20 days a year is important.

When you to colleagues, that safeguarding culture is the key reason that they stay. I have just written lots of letters thanking people for 20 years’ service. When people feel that they are in the right place, it is the best job in the world.

What I talked to you about earlier on, the fact that we are focusing on it every day, it is easy to sit and moan about the lack of qualified early years educators out there. Obviously, there are previous things that happened to do with GCSE requirements that did not help our sector, but we have our own training academy. Rather than saying we cannot find an early years qualified workforce out there, we home-grow our own talent. Out of a workforce of 8,000, we have 1,000 learners who work across the business. They range from more mature workers who want a change in career, providing those opportunities to people that might have skills and experience in other sectors, and have perhaps had their own children, who want to come in and work within early years. The other thing is making sure that colleagues feel supported, making sure you are investing in the benefits that I talked about. I have to keep stressing that it is easier, as you become a larger business, to do some of these things. When I think back to 18 years ago when I was on my own running a nursery, it is much harder when you have a lot of other things to do day to day. We are able to invest in our central support team, to have a people team, a recruitment team, an internal training team, a training academy, but there is not enough investment for single settings and for individuals in our sector to be able to do all of those things. For me, the two things that are most important are safeguarding and quality. That is why we do and invest in the things that we do in our business.

We did a blog around some of our evidence from our inspections back in 2024 regarding high turnover and the impact that had. That reflected a lot of what has been said here—some of the difficulties with high staff turnover; lack of opportunity to get to know the children well; inconsistency in the key persons system, because that is so important in settling children in and getting that information sharing with parents; and also senior staff having to step into ratios as well and the impact that might have. We did see some good practice in mitigating risk, as Clare has described, prioritising training so that new and temporary staff get a particular focus on safeguarding training when they arrive. Some settings mitigate that risk well, but that does not get away from the fact that we do not want that high turnover of staff and having to mitigate that. We want that quality where children are safe and protected.

I have recently been sending out thank you letters to people who have been with us for over 20 years. There are staff who are really committed, and we do have a lot of staff who are highly qualified, who have degrees and are early years professionals, who have gone far above the level 3 and are committed to working with those children. What saddens me is that we are not able to reflect that commitment with a higher salary band, particularly for those staff who have worked with us for a long time or who have completed degrees and so on. We do often lose people to other roles as they move further into education.

I was going to say a similar thing. It is not a good example of good practice, but the level of commitment and dedication to the provision and the safeguarding element of it, from both our members in early years settings and also those who work for Ofsted inspecting early years settings, is exemplary.

I do not want to overshare, but I know from personal experience that it is one of the best jobs that you can do. You are working directly with children and families, your colleagues, and you are helping children to grow in their early years. I look back to my early career with great fondness. There are a set of ingredients that make a unit or a setting brilliant, and it is brilliance that we want for all of our children. It is staffing stability; longevity; confidence and trust in your managers and those you are working with; creating an environment where children are banging on the door to get in and are sometimes reluctant to go home. Parents talk to each other, so you know those units that are incredibly popular. Safeguarding, even in those settings, is critical to remain focused on. There is an issue about high turnover—not just use of agency workers, but where it is not working well, there are indicators there too: low pay; high turnover; a critical and harsh environment; not a lot for children to do; parents are not happy. We need to watch out for those units too. Earlier on in this discussion, we talked about consistency. There is consistency of service delivery that could be out there, and we need to watch out for it.

The thing is professionalising the sector and giving people pathways to recognise there are lots of jobs out there that you can do. As a 17 or 18-year-old leaving school, no one has any idea what they want to do. Sometimes they need a nurturing arm around them to recognise that they can progress in any organisation. It is giving people the ability to recognise that they can work their way up through different positions within early years. Our greatest examples are people who are now leaders within our organisations, who left school at 16 and went into early years. It is important that you give hope to the future generation of workers by giving them the clear ability to recognise what they can do.

I would just a like a quick follow up on recruitment. It is a little bit of the elephant in the room, so if you do not want to answer, that is fine. The Department for Education is describing steps it is taking to meet workforce challenges, including recruitment campaigns seeking to attract more men into the sector. Given some of the horrific stories we have heard recently about what has been happening in nurseries, how comfortable do you feel about welcoming more men into the sector?

We have to be mindful that just because a handful of men do something that is inappropriate, we cannot make a decision to say that having men in early years is not the right thing to do. The wider point is around the culture of organisations and recruiting the right people. Men have as much to offer as females do within the early years workforce. For lots of children, they might not have the opportunity for male role models, so it is important that they have a balance and mix of colleagues working across rooms.

We welcome men in early years, and it would be a sad state of affairs if we moved away from that approach. Obviously, you have to have the right recruitment and the right checks, but, as Clare said, a diversity within our workforce is important.

Not much to add, but just to say that if the safeguarding and the recruitment process are right, the fact that the majority of offenders are men should not matter because they will not be employed in the first place.

Colleagues and witnesses, we are struggling with time at this point. We have had an important discussion about lots of sensitive topics, but I need help from colleagues with brief questions on the topics that we need to ask about, and answers that are succinct as possible from our witnesses, otherwise we will struggle to get through everything that we want to by 12 o’clock. Thank you.

I have a very quick question about ratios that changed in ’23. How do current starter child ratios in early years settings support or potentially undermine safeguarding and supervision? Has it made it harder?

The problem with ratios is that they are something we have to follow. The reality is that children are unique and individual. You do not wake up the day after your fourth birthday and say, “Oh brilliant, I can go on a 1:30 ratio suddenly, rather than a 1:8 I was on the day before”. It is about knowing your children. Obviously, you are referring to the change in the two-year-old ratios from 1:4 to 1:5. In the norm, we operate at 1:4. As the academic year goes on, the reality of children and how ready they are to move to a 1:5 ratio depends on those children and depends on where they sit within that room. It is about knowing your children and doing the best for them, and that is how we view it.

What does become a challenge is that, inevitably, our funding is based on those ratios. If, nationally, we are being told that a 1:5 ratio is okay for a two-year-old, I can accept that it is very different for a child that has just turned two compared with a child who is almost three. We have children at different stages of development. Where the funding is linked, it makes it more difficult to sit at having those higher ratios and that does cause an issue.

Our members think it is problematic. We were opposed to the change at the time; we think it increases the risk to child safety. Going back to my earlier point around workloads and stress, it increases staff workload, so there is a problem there. One other thing to mention in this context is that, if you have a child or number of children who need 1:1 support, perhaps they have SEND, the ratios become higher than 1:5 in practice if some children are, rightly, getting 1:1. That is difficult. There is research from Nottingham Trent University and University of Northampton saying that the ratio of 1:5 just does not work, and we would agree with that.

DfE is responsible for the setting of the ratio requirements, and they are minimum requirements, but you can put that against a backdrop of increasing financial pressure on settings. The key role there is knowing the children, and when we go out to inspect or regulate these settings, a question is what is it like for a child here, and are we ensured that the provider is meeting the needs of all the children who are there? That is important.

Absolutely, children need to be risk assessed and know that they are getting the support they need. Ratios should then follow. It would be great if the ratios followed the child, rather than the minimum being the standard. As has been mentioned, there are children with additional needs that require additional support.

Starting with Clare, my question is about intimate care tasks. Some argue that such tasks should always be carried out by two members of staff. What are your views on that, and the reality of the practice behind it?

In an ideal world, of course that would be best practice. Being practical, it is all about the configuration of your environment and things like that. If nappy changing or toilet facilities are directly off rooms, it is much easier to ensure that colleagues are never on their own, but the reality is that this sector is not funded in a way that enables two people to always be present during intimate care times. The concern is about protecting children and making sure that colleagues, where possible, do that, but it is not always possible. That is, unfortunately, just a fact within our sector at the moment.

It is about taking a sensible approach, having changing areas that are visible but maintain the child’s dignity as well, particularly at change time. It is an important learning opportunity for a child, it is part of their routine, their care and their nurture. To have two people there is difficult for that child, so we need to think about how we can do that in a safe way so that people are not able to go off for long periods of time unobserved, and absolutely not out of sight or hearing. You can do it in a way that does not require two people to be there at all times.

Not to repeat what has been said, but just to say there is an interaction between the 2:1 intimate care and the ratios we were just talking about. Operating at a minimum level of staffing ratios, you have two staff doing intimate care, the ratio, in practice, for all the other children is much higher or lower.

I was just thinking about balance between the impact that would have on the needs of the other children at the same time and making sure the needs of the child are paramount in that as well.

If we are worried about the sexual abuse of children, having two adults present makes sense to me. However, I understand the challenges that that brings. That is something that the sector needs to consider.

My question is specifically to Jayne: where you have safeguarding concerns that arise, how does Ofsted distinguish between individual practitioner responsibility and the provider taking accountability for that?

As you are aware, Ofsted is charged with the inspection of child providers at individual setting level. When we do receive information that might suggest that a provider is not meeting the requirements of registration, as I said before, we will assess that against other information we hold about a provider, and that might be a group or an individual setting, depending on whether it is an individual setting or how they are registered. If we did have concerns about the nominated person, and they oversaw more than one setting, then that would impact on the work that we did or the action that we might take in relation to the other settings that sat under that group provider. It is a complex world out there and the landscape has changed in early years. That is why we welcome working with the DfE to look at how we now look at multiple providers and how we register, inspect and regulate against that. You will know that we formally started conversations with DfE in January. That is something we have long asked for, but we have started formal conversations with DfE about what that might look like and whether that might need legislative change to make sure that what we are doing is the right thing and is the right thing for children.

Are you confident that there is enough clarity in the assessment process to know whether you are dealing with an individual or a wider provider or cultural point?

They are some of the conversations that we need to have from January. Group providers can look very different. There is no one definition of a group provider and how they are registered. It is important that we have those conversations so we get ourselves to a place where there is clarity about our role in registration, inspection and regulation of those multiple providers, working with the sector and with DfE so that we can get to the best place with our role in that.

My question is for Jayne. How does Ofsted assess safeguarding culture rather than just compliance with statutory requirements and processes?

We have all agreed that having that open and positive safeguarding culture is important. The panel will be aware that we recently published our renewed inspection framework in November. Thinking about the writing of that renewed inspection framework, we wanted to make sure that it was well aligned to the EYFS to enable us to regulate effectively through our inspection work. Also, as part of the evaluation area in safeguarding, you will see a focus on whether there is an open and honest safeguarding culture within those settings. Those are some of the things that we ask our inspectors to look at when they are out there. When they are out in a setting, doing a regulatory visit or an inspection, our inspectors are looking at what it is like for a child in that setting. That is about the open and honest safeguarding culture that we hope exists within that setting; talking to leaders and following that up with conversations with staff and looking at the impact that has on the children. It is also about understanding what training, including safeguarding training, staff might have had and also what the impact of that is in practice, not just ensuring that people have been on safeguarding courses, but that you can see that and it is displayed through the conversations that we have. It is not a compliance checklist; it has a quality element to it looking at the strength of that. If you look at the toolkit now, there is a section around what evidence inspectors look at to collect when we are out on our inspections, and that is in all the sections for all the evaluation areas. While there is safeguarding evaluation area itself, that is looking more at the child protection requirements, but you will see that safeguarding is threaded through all parts of that inspection toolkit as well. We are considering that in all aspects of provision.

In light of recent horrific cases where there was a catastrophic lack of safeguarding culture, how does Ofsted ensure the lessons from serious incidents are embedded across the early years inspection system? Does Ofsted anticipate any change in light of these cases?

As I said, we are a reflective organisation and we will go back and do a learning review to look at the process, the systems and what happened, particularly where things have gone wrong so that we can look at how we change and strengthen processes, doing what we need to do to ensure that we are constantly learning, evolving and strengthening our practice. Some of the things that we have done are to strengthen the renewed inspection framework and to disseminate that learning through our inspection workforce: for example our inspectors had an additional two days’ training as part of the renewed inspection framework—some of that focused specifically on babies, which was another focus in the renewed inspection framework, with safer eating and safer sleeping. As we understand more around strengthening those practices, we need to feed that back through our frameworks and our inspection workforce. We also have a key role to play in sharing that learning with the Department for Education. We meet with the DfE safeguarding team. We have an internal safeguarding audit that we feed back to DfE about trends, patterns and research that we might be seeing so that we can work with and advise where there might be further strengthening in the EYFS as well. That is something that we need to constantly do, it is a continuous loop.

It sounds like you think everything is fine?

No—that is why I say we are a reflective organisation.

There have been a series of serious cases where there is a clear mismatch between what Ofsted have said about an institution and what has been happening inside that institution. I don’t think that parents listening to this evidence session will find, “We are an organisation that has a culture of learning, and we are reflecting” to be an adequate response to some of what they are reading in the media at the moment.

I apologise if that is how I came across. We absolutely do not think everything is fine; that is why we are reflecting on our practice and looking at what we can move forward to do. That is why we are working with DfE and we want to be part of this expert panel looking at CCTV. We have met with some parents who have been impacted by the horrific events that have happened in cases, so we can listen to what people are telling us and absorb that internally and look at what extra we need to do. We know that we have a key role to play in ensuring settings are safe and that parents can drop their children off with absolute confidence at the beginning of the day. We also recognise that we are one player in part on a community that needs to work together. I apologise if I appeared to be saying that everything was solved; it is not. We know that there is work to do and we will continue to listen to what parents, the sector and our inspectors are telling us. We work with our stakeholder groups and listen to what they are telling us. It is important that we do that.

We take seriously any complaint that is raised by a parent, police or a local authority, however it comes in to us. We do a risk assessment process on that, looking at what we have been told against the information that we hold. It is important that we take action where we believe, or we have been told, that practice is not at the standard that would be expected. We have that risk assessment process. If we feel that we need to go out and visit as part of a risk assessment process, we will then refer that notification to our regional early years team, who, depending on what the situation is, might go out and carry out a regulatory visit, or they might decide to do a reinspection. If we do a regulatory visit, the judgment as was—the grade as is now sitting on that inspection report—would not change. Sometimes it is the right thing to do to go out and inspect. We also have the option to go unannounced or not announce. We did stop the routine of announced inspections in 2015, which was around clarity across the sector, and across the different remits that we inspect. That is one of the things that we are being asked to think about and to have conversations with DfE about, around those no notice inspections and where that threshold might sit.

We had 21,000 notifications in our last reporting year that we published. Our last official statistics said that 98% of our settings were good or outstanding, so there often is a mismatch between a good setting and potentially a notification.

It is set out in our publications. It comes in to the applications, registration and compliance team, and they will do a risk assessment, looking at what the previous inspection history is, and what other notifications we might have had about that setting. At that point, our team can choose to speak to the provider to get some more information. If we feel that there is a breach of requirements or children are at risk of harm, we will refer that into region and our regional teams would pick that up and do some more in-depth work, which usually involves speaking to the provider, doing a visit or doing an inspection.

Our applications team have 24 hours to respond if it is a safeguarding concern. If we assess that something is urgent regulatory action, we need to respond within 24 hours. That does not necessarily mean that going out to the provider, because we obviously work with other statutory partners as well, so it might be contacting the LADO or it might be working with the police, or we will go out within a week for a non-urgent regulatory—we might go out sooner, but we have up to that time. We are held to account for those timescales through our internal corporate systems.

This question will be for Mike, Claire and Clare: from a provider perspective, what are your views on the role that Ofsted currently plays in ensuring accountability in the early years sector? In addition to your current views on it, are there any improvements that you think need to be made to the inspection or regulatory processes in order to make Ofsted more effective?

Ofsted has reformed how it is currently doing inspections. In fairness, it is a recent change and we have not had as much experience of it as we had previously. It feels more like a collaboration between provider and Ofsted, in the sense of being your day to talk about what you do and how your setting is. I am not sure it was always the case previously, or it certainly did not feel like that all the time. One of the things for me, and I have touched on this before, is about notifications. We are clear on what we need to notify, but at times, and because there are so many inspectors, they are not always clear on whether something needs to be notified, or not. As a provider, we are left in a situation where I know we are over-notifying and will be causing Ofsted more admin issues than we probably need to—but the last thing I need when an inspection starts is a big debate over whether something should be notified or not. We all know, in any organisation, that you do not start off with the best foot forward if you are arguing over minor issues. We have a bit at the moment where we are over-reporting everything to cover ourselves. That is because we have been told by some inspectors that any contact we make with any external agency needs to be shared with Ofsted. Until someone tells me what does or does not, that is what I will carry on doing across 270 nurseries. I know that that is what is happening on the ground because I have a wider understanding and picture of what is happening even in different geographical regions within Ofsted. We need Ofsted; Ofsted is there as a regulator, and I welcome it coming in as an additional support and assessing where our settings sit for quality.

Do you think that clarity around to notify or not to notify, and the thresholds of that, is an improvement that could be made? Is that a satisfactory situation?

Yes. If I am unsure, it must be incredibly difficult for the single setting provider to know whether they should have done that or not done that. We are able to take a view as an organisation with a team that says, “Just report”; I can see people looking thinking, “Why are you getting us to do this?”, but I am getting them to do it because I want to do the right thing and it ultimately sits as my responsibility and I take it incredibly seriously. There could be much tighter strengthening and clarity for providers and inspectors on what does need notifying and what does not.

I would agree with that. There needs to be much more clarity on what we need to report to Ofsted, and what we do not, and also a better understanding of what happens when a notification goes through so that people feel that it is a supported process. The changes within the inspection framework that allow much more of a professional dialogue will enable people to share more about what is happening in their settings and allow Ofsted to be able to ask those more challenging questions. It does feel as though there is a slightly different approach to inspections that has been rolled out now.

As I said in my introductory remarks, we have members in early years and also working as Ofsted inspectors, so from a provider perspective we are coming from both. What is interesting is that both groups welcome inspection. Early years workers are more welcoming of it than members in schools are. There is a particular feeling among our members in early years that it is welcome and, in our survey, quite a high percentage say they would welcome more Ofsted inspection. A lot of our members have the feeling that there should be more ability to do those regulatory visits. I take Jayne’s point that that cannot lead to a change in the Ofsted grade, but where there has been a concern, it gives our members a chance to get in there and really drill down into what is happening with safeguarding. The fact that in school inspections you have an additional inspector doing just that safeguarding stuff points to the importance of that in early years as well. There is a strong case for more of those regulatory visits alongside the more routine inspections.

It is important to balance with the fact that it is easy for a colleague in your business or a parent who is unhappy about fees or something to complain to Ofsted, and they do not have to identify themselves. Sometimes concerns raised to Ofsted may not be genuine. Obviously, that is for Ofsted to look into those matters and decide what to address.

There is an important differentiation between school inspections and early years inspections. Obviously I am not saying that a poor outcome is not good for schools, but with an early years inspection there is a real critical factor for your business in the sense that your early years funding can be withdrawn if you do not achieve the required standard. In a school, it does not work in quite the same way. As a provider, there is a risk for you if your inspection is not good.

My next question is to Ann Graham around local authorities. Where does accountability for safeguarding in early years provision sit within local authorities? How is that accountability exercised in practice?

Within a local authority, safeguarding generally sits with the chief executive of the council. That usually sits with people who hold my role, director of children’s services. My job is a single focus on children services. I will inform and brief him, and I have regular contact with him. On the political side, we have the leader of the council, and we have the statutory lead member for children’s services. The political accountability sits there. There are four of us, and I keep them regularly informed—I have a large team of people, and I keep them briefed regularly. We also have the safeguarding partner arrangements with the police, education services and health, in particular, and the local authority. We meet regularly. Data and information are shared, including for early years, because it is all of children’s services. That gives you the structure: we are all safeguarding partners, equally accountable for safeguarding arrangements, but on a day-to-day basis within the local authority, I take the lead on all of those statutory arrangements.

Do you think that there are improvements that are needed so that local authorities have the tools, the capacity and the authority they need to oversee and intervene where necessary in safeguarding matters within early years provision?

I think so. However, capacity is always an issue. There is more that we could do with the private sector. In my local authority, and in many local authorities, training is offered. There is reach with the LADO. We have heard earlier in this discussion about consistency of those relationships; is that because people are not building those relationships, or is it because LADOs are very busy? That is something that we could look into, but capacity does ease those issues. We have heard about training: who provides that, who pays for it, who funds it? We come back to the rigour and the scrutiny of what happens in sites that are currently inspected once every six years. That is a long time. People can start and leave during that period. It is moving to once in four years; we have heard that people welcome inspection, and we know that although inspection can be—I am trying to think of another word other than “a pain”—a burden, a focus is helpful.

My question is for Ann. To what extent are LADOs and the director of children’s services appropriately resourced? You mentioned the funding challenges that councils face and that the role of LADOs is not consistent. What steps could be taken to improve public awareness of the two roles?

The public awareness of the LADO is critical. The LADO in my local authority does training, including for those in all sectors, voluntary organisations, faith groups and so on. It would be good if there was additional funding to have more LADOs, because they could do more work. Workloads vary because the LADOs are not just for the early years sector; they are across all of the local authority. Yes, additional capacity would be helpful. I do not see that it is going to be forthcoming, but the more capacity we have the more work we can do. That would include promotion to parents. We have access to websites, but we could do much more on awareness about LADOs. I am not sure that the public is familiar with the role of director of children’s services. People know that they can complain in to the council, but that is probably the bit that needs highlighting, if it is not already highlighted.

Do you think an average parent of a child in an early years’ setting in Haringey knows what LADO stands for, who the LADO is and how to get hold of them?

I don’t know. Using AI, people might google, “who do I complain to in the local authority?” and it might come up that way. Ten years ago, I would have said no because even those who say the word “LADO” may not know what that stands for, but we do know what the LADO role is. It tends to be linked to professionals. Yes, there is more there that we could do for public awareness.

My next question is to Claire Reid, Mike Short and Clare Roberts. How clear and effective are your local authorities in supporting quality assurance and accountability in early years provisions? What specific improvements to local authority processes, if any, would make them more consistent, efficient and supportive of early year providers?

It is consistency, again. Obviously, having a consistent approach and having consistent funding allocated to training support for providers is key. It is a bit like a postcode lottery; in a large organisation like ours, we are able to pick up some of the things that are missing, but if you are a single setting, you are unable to do that. There needs to be consistency, looking at what support is offered. As I said earlier, lots are amazing but there are some where you are thinking, “This is not real and is not how things should be”.

Because you have that wider view and you work with countless local authorities, you say some are quite brilliant—so you can see best practice?

100%. There are some that invest in training and some that are able to support that. Some visit settings more regularly and some are open to the fact that picking up the phone does not mean that you do not know your individual responsibility, but talking things through is sharing experiences and taking advice and guidance from an expert—whereas some would say, “What are you phoning me for?”. We have 271 settings. For some local authorities, we may have 10 nurseries that sit within that local authority. They may think that they speak to us a lot, but if we have 10 nurseries, they should speak to us a lot. Sometimes it is a perception of how many settings you might have in that local authority and why you are talking to them more regularly.

I would agree that it is a very mixed picture across the country and that there are differences among local authorities. That does make training difficult. The focus is often on the settings that have not had a positive Ofsted outcome. You will get an awful lot of support at that point, but, with the inspection cycle being quite long, there is not necessarily that noticing to see whether there has been any change in practice. Local authorities would know if a setting does not engage in their training or network meetings, but there is not anything necessarily done about that. That creates gaps.

I agree. There is a massive variation in practice. Effective local authorities have teams of early years specialists who are well resourced, trained and do regular quality checks. They are proactive in that sense and provide bespoke training. There are others who do not have as much resource, and as a result only provide support when they are pushed, perhaps by Ofsted. Our members often find that the people they need to speak to in local authority are too busy, and so on. That is not a criticism of local authorities, so much as it is a criticism of funding—the last time UNISON did research on the funding gap in local authorities, which was last year, it was about £3 billion in England. The gap between the services they currently provide and the amount of money the expected to get in the next financial year. It is £4 billion across GB and about £3 billion in England. There has been some injection of investment from the Government in local government since then, which is welcome, but we are at the beginning of a process of rebuilding services in local government at the moment, so it is a struggle.

My next question is for Mike and Claire Reid. What evidence do providers collect to demonstrate compliance with safeguarding standards during inspections and ongoing self-evaluation? What are those evidence documents that you look for?

In terms of the information we collect for inspection, what Ofsted ask us to provide is not a very high bar. There was quite a shift within the inspection process to make sure that settings do not have to do too much paperwork. On safeguarding, we always make sure that we record all the children’s information, any concerns are recorded, and there is also a strong requirement that, when a child transitions to another setting—for example, when a child moves from nursery to school—we can share that information and concern in the right way.

I am not sure I have anything to add to the question.

Training records, safeguarding logs, incident reports, internal audits, risk registers, supervision records, CCTV review process, safeguarding dashboards, flowcharts, leadership monitoring reports, and clear records of all concerns and complaints to be discussed.

We have that data, but whether Ofsted ask us for it is a slightly different thing.

There are some mandatory documents that we would always ask about. Every inspection is individual, but you are right that we did move away from being more paper-based. People would have their Ofsted file, and then inspectors would in a room and not out seeing the practice on the ground, interacting with staff, having those conversations, and correlating what leaders have told us with practice on the ground. We might look at a variety of all that documentation as part of our inquiries and our conversations, but we have a narrow range of mandatory stuff.

We have talked about how important high-quality training is. Clare says she has evidence of that training that has been implemented and the outcome of that. I would say that is something Ofsted may be interested in looking at.

We are absolutely interested in the training that has been done and the impact that has within the setting. That is key. We are in a daycare setting for up to six hours, and a childminder’s for half a day. It is being proportionate about what we are looking at and not over-burdening the professionals who work in those settings, but making sure we get underneath what it is like for a child in that setting. It is important that we do continue talking to the organisations that sit around us, particularly stakeholder groups, Early Years Alliance and so on, so that we hear those messages around consistency and how we can look at strengthening our practice where it needs it.

The local authority will also ask us about staff qualifications and training as part of their quality visits, as well as part of their funding requirements.

That leads perfectly onto my question for you, Ann. What specific challenges arise for local authorities, when regulating or supporting large nursery chains, around consistency, communication and accountability? We talked about this earlier from the other perspective of large nursery chains working with lots of different local authorities, but from the perspective of a local authority, what are the challenges?

If it is a large nursery chain, we would not have oversight over the entire nursery chain; we would have oversight of those that are in our areas. Then it is, as described, that there are forums that the settings can attend. We would take an overview of the quality of provision generally. If there was a concern, then we would use our teams—we have a team in Haringey—who would work with that team and the larger provider.

We talked earlier about trying to differentiate between a setting-specific safeguarding concern and something that might be more across a chain. When an issue has been identified and there is concern that it might be a chain-wide issue, do you routinely let other local authorities know, where that provider is present in those local authorities, to be aware of it?

It would depend on the situation that had arisen. I do not think that that is currently routine.

Could it be?

In light of what we have heard recently and recent cases, I think we need to strongly consider that, so that we get that overview. We know that people can move around within a setting. It happens more regularly within the school chains, because we know of the school chains and we know how they work more. We need to look at how we work well with those school chains and transpose that across to nursery chains. That is something we need to look at in light of recent cases.

A final question from me: given the heightened safeguarding risks for children with SEND, who often require higher staffing ratios, specialist staff training, stable key person relationships and adapted safe environments, does the current funding model enable early years providers to meet those safeguarding responsibilities effectively?

It depends whether you are getting adequate support from local authorities to support children with needs. It is challenging, depending on where you live, how quickly children can get the right support that is needed within the setting. Often it falls to the provider to put those additional ratios in place without the adequate funding.

Is that in part because of the time it takes and the difficulty of acquiring an EHCP, which is the funding mechanism?

Yes.

We have heard elsewhere that it can feel, for early years providers, that they do all of the work to get the EHCP and then the child is old enough to go to school. It is great that they have it, but too late for the provider.

We have had situations where children have had 1:1 support in maintained nurseries, and, for whatever reason, it has not worked out in practice with that child in that setting, and the local authorities have asked us to take the child back without the 1:1 support. I said, “Absolutely no chance—we would like the 1:1 support”, which they gave us because they realised you cannot put those kinds of responsibilities—if a child is unable to be kept in a maintained school nursery on a 1:1 support, you cannot expect them to go back into a private provision without the adequate funding. There needs to be a full look at what happens with where you live and how quickly you get the support. It is easier in a group, and I keep stressing this, where you have resources to invest and to put those extra ratios in place. You cannot do that—it is an unsustainable sector to put that on single-site providers with how it is currently funded.

Is the issue not so much the funding model, but the speed at which providers are able to access that additional funding?

It is both. The speed of how you access it, some of it is where you live whether or not you get that funding in the first place. It is also quite an admin task to apply for funding. We have a SEND support team who support our specific SEND in each local setting. Obviously, not everyone has that.

I imagine a small individual provider is not going to have a support team.

Exactly, and the whole reason we have these things in place is to reduce some of that burden.

It goes before the EHCP process. We often very much focus on that, but when a young child comes into our setting, even if they have been promoted to come into our setting by, say for example, a health visitor who has said to a parent, “We have concerns about this child”, in most local authorities there is a requirement to do the plan, do a review, gathering that evidence, before there is even a conversation about whether there is any additional support. Even though a range of professionals have said, “We think this child needs extra support”, the nursery still needs to go through essentially three cycles of observation, assessment and input to see whether that funding is needed. In every local authority there will be different criteria. I take on board what Clare is saying, but as a local provider, it is about developing that good relationship with the local authority and being able to understand the mechanisms to secure that additional funding. It is a challenge; we will often have schools say they cannot meet the child’s needs, and the local authority say, “Nursery, you need to take the child back again”. That is really unfair.

Ann, we had better hear from you.

I am not familiar with the situation where a child is moved around. If a child has needs, those needs have to be met. I am not familiar with that situation. We know that the Government are working on White Papers on SEND and schools because we know that the system does not act as quickly as it needs to sometimes, for children of different ages. One of the things I am passionate about is speech and language for a child. Sometimes we are asked for speech and language support—I don’t know whether that is our colleagues’ experience—and, when the child has been in a nursery setting for a while, their speech and language pick up. That is probably part of the reason for the review and planning. We know that the Government are looking at a White Paper to address the SEND system that we know is sometimes referred to as broken.

Thank you all very much. That brings us to the end of this evidence session. We appreciate your coming today to give us evidence. If there is anything that you did not feel you were able to get across in the time that we had available, or any additional detail or points of clarification that you would like to make, please feel free to write to the Committee afterwards. We would very much welcome that. For now, that brings our evidence session to an end.