A review of Devon’s largest council’s ability to look after some of the county’s most vulnerable children was “like winning the World Cup”, its most senior official has claimed.

The update from Ofsted stated that Devon County Council’s children’s services department now largely provides children and families with a “timely, well-coordinated and increasingly integrated” response.

The so-called monitoring visit from the watchdog does not change the official rating of the service, though, which was rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted for a second time in May 2025.

Devon’s cabinet was updated on the latest review by Ofsted, and an edited video of testimony from staff was shown to the meeting.

“It was a fantastic result,” Donna Manson, the council’s chief executive said in the video.

“I was so excited, it was like winning the World Cup.”

Ms Manson said she was most proud of Ofsted’s view that the service is “working sensitively with families, not working with families with judgement or with predetermination”.

Reference was made in the cabinet meeting (Wednesday 9 September) about the council’s efforts to provide earlier help and support for families so that any issues were dealt with sooner and prevented from escalating.

Ms Manson added it was the first report she had received from Ofsted that did not discuss legacy issues and focused on the “good job now”.

The letter from Ofsted acknowledges widespread improvement by the county council, and points to leaders having an “accurate understanding of the strengths and remaining inconsistencies across front door services”, and that frontline workers were “helping the large majority of children and families in Devon to receive the right help at the right time”.

“Leaders have engaged practitioners and partners well in designing their family help model and planning its implementation,” the letter from Ofsted said. 

“This work builds on leaders’ highly impactful expansion of targeted early help, which has significantly improved families’ timely access to support.”

Councillor Richard Jefferies (Liberal Democrat, Feniton and Honiton), the cabinet member for children’s social services, said: “More children and families are getting help when they need it and Ofsted recognised that,” he said.

He added that a teacher who had returned to the profession after a few years out, said they were “impressed by the early help offer and family help offer now available” from the council.

But Julian Wooster, the interim director of children and young people’s futures, while acknowledging the huge effort by frontline staff to improve the service, noted work remained.

“The only thing is that there is still quite a significant amount of work to do,” he said.

“We have made great progress, and we are not in the same place we were in 2024, but there is still significant improvement work around the sufficiency of children’s homes and the need for more foster carers, so that we can provide good and outstanding services.”

Councillor Julian Brazil (Liberal Democrat, Kingsbridge) the leader of the council, said he was “incredibly proud” of the monitoring letter from Ofsted.

“There has been an incredible amount of work from Julian [Wooster] and the children’s services team and it has absolutely paid dividends,” he said.

“We are now delivering for some of the most vulnerable children in Devon, which was our top priority and we’ve pursued it with cross-party support following on from the work of the previous administration.”

The letter from Ofsted was published this week and comes after its monitoring visit in August.

It’s not yet known when its next formal inspection will be, which would be when the watchdog would decide whether to change the service’s rating or not.