CRITICISM by Ofsted of deteriorations in Bournemouth council’s work with youngsters leaving the care system would have been appealed had it been possible, the authority’s director of children’s services has said.

The watchdog deemed the quality of the council’s work to have declined since its last inspection in 2014 – a judgement which has been labelled as “unfair” by Sue Ross, who heads up the department.

Children’s services officials were grilled by councillors at Thursday’s meeting of the children’s services overview and scrutiny panel on why performance was deemed to be so poor.

Ofsted examined the council’s children’s services work in July and rating it as ‘requires improvement’ overall although its management was given the lowest ‘inadequate’ score.

Inspectors said that leaders had “not paid sufficient attention” to address areas where performance had declined, including the progress of care leavers.

However, Dr Ross said that the criticism had been “a little unfair” and that since 2014 several measures had been implemented to improve the work, including social workers now having contact with every care leaver.

She said: “The last thing I want to do is defend the indefensible. “I had many sleepless nights about this and we spent hours with our managers talking about the findings so we are not seeking to be defensive.

“We failed to convince them [the Ofsted inspectors] in some areas but the comment that services for care leavers has deteriorated, I don’t think you can make that judgement.

“I do accept the criticisms in the report but I will continue robustly to refute the comment about care leaver services deteriorating.”

Cllr Nicola Greene, the cabinet member for children’s services, said that the inspection had thrown up some surprises and that they had “failed to convince” inspectors that improvements had been made in some areas.

“I would agree that we have made a lot of progress with care leavers [since 2014] but we do have to accept the report and we have got a plan and that plan is being sorted to address the points raised.”

Council officers are drawing up an improvement plan which is expected to be published next month.

It will be reviewed monthly to monitor progress in the areas of concern raised by Ofsted.