How ratings work
What we ask, who can answer, how scores are calculated, and what we can't check.
What we ask
For children's services in England, we ask about honesty, records, use of power, involvement, getting help, safety, complaints and care. The form has six sections. It covers everyday contact as well as serious failures, and includes questions that apply only to particular experiences.
Social Work England's professional standards apply to registered social workers in England. We use them to inform questions about people's experience of a council's service. This questionnaire is independent, is not endorsed by Social Work England, and does not determine whether a standard was breached.
Answer from direct experience. "Unable to assess" means the question does not apply or you do not know enough to answer. It is excluded from scores. If something was needed but never happened, use the lowest answer rather than "Unable to assess".
Children's services in England · 36 questions
Honesty, records and decisions · 6 questions
-
1
Was the service honest and truthful with you?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
2
Did records you saw accurately reflect what was said and what happened?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
3
Did the service make clear what was fact, what was an allegation and what was its opinion?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
4
Did the service properly respond when you challenged information in your records?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
5
Did the service consider relevant evidence before making decisions?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
6
Did the service explain the reasons for decisions affecting your family?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
Power, fairness and your circumstances · 6 questions
-
7
Was the service's use of its powers proportionate to the concerns?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
8
Did the service treat you fairly, without discrimination?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
9
Did the service adapt how it worked to your family's communication or disability needs?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
10
Did the service distinguish financial or housing difficulties from concerns about how you cared for your child?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
11
Did the service take account of domestic abuse and coercive control when responding to your family?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
12
Did the service handle your family's private information with care?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
The child and family having a say · 6 questions
-
13
Did the service take the child's wishes and feelings seriously?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
14
Did the social worker spend enough time with the child to understand their everyday life?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
15
Were you meaningfully involved in decisions affecting your family?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
16
Were you given the information you needed in time to prepare for important meetings?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
17
Did the service help you or the child access independent advice or advocacy when needed?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
18
Did the service properly consider safe support from relatives or other people important to the child?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
Getting help and reliable support · 6 questions
-
19
Did the service respond to requests for assessment or help without avoidable delay?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
20
Did the support agreed in your plan actually happen?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
21
Did the service help your family get practical support that matched your needs?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
22
Could you reach someone who took responsibility when you needed a response?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
23
When workers changed, did your family's support continue smoothly?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
24
Did children's services work effectively with other services involved with your family?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
Safety, complaints and putting things right · 6 questions
-
25
Did the service act promptly on concerns about the child's safety?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
26
Did the service make it straightforward to raise a concern or complaint?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
27
Did the service take your concerns or complaints seriously?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
28
Did your complaint progress within the timescales you were given?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
29
Were you treated fairly after raising a concern or complaint?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
30
When the service accepted that something had gone wrong, did it take the action it promised?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
Care and moving into adulthood · 6 questions
-
31
Did the care arranged for the child meet their individual needs?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
32
Did the service protect the child from avoidable disruption when arranging or changing their care?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
33
Did the service support agreed, safe contact with people important to the child?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
34
Did the service give carers the information and support they needed to care for the child?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
35
Did reviews of the child's care lead to action on the issues raised?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
-
36
Did the service prepare the young person for moving into adulthood with the support they needed?
- 1 Never
- 2 Rarely
- 3 Sometimes
- 4 Usually
- 5 Always
- Unable to assess
Other services, including children's services in Wales · 5 questions
Communication and involvement · 5 questions
-
1
How clearly did the service explain its role?
- 1 Very unclearly
- 2 Unclearly
- 3 Partly clearly
- 4 Clearly
- 5 Very clearly
- Unable to assess
-
2
How clearly did the service explain decisions affecting you?
- 1 Very unclearly
- 2 Unclearly
- 3 Partly clearly
- 4 Clearly
- 5 Very clearly
- Unable to assess
-
3
How well did the service listen to your views?
- 1 Very poorly
- 2 Poorly
- 3 Partly
- 4 Well
- 5 Very well
- Unable to assess
-
4
How respectfully did the service communicate with you?
- 1 Very disrespectfully
- 2 Disrespectfully
- 3 Mixed
- 4 Respectfully
- 5 Very respectfully
- Unable to assess
-
5
How easy was it to understand the next steps in dealing with the service?
- 1 Very difficult
- 2 Difficult
- 3 Neither easy nor difficult
- 4 Easy
- 5 Very easy
- Unable to assess
We don't ask people to judge legal compliance, and a decision someone disagrees with doesn't necessarily mean poor practice.
What informed the questions
The questions draw on professional standards, national guidance and issues identified through inspections, complaints and children's advocacy. These sources help us choose what to ask; they do not establish how often a problem happens or whether it happened in a particular council.
- Social Work England's professional standards and supporting guidance: honesty, accurate records, proportionate use of authority, rights, complaints and putting things right. The references alongside each question indicate related standards; the questions are our own wording.
- Children's Social Care National Framework (March 2026, PDF): family networks, poverty and disadvantage, practical help, stable care and support into adulthood.
- Working Together to Safeguard Children (2026): family help, services working together, domestic abuse, coercive control and harm in different settings.
- Ofsted's annual report 2024/25: children's relationships, stability in care and the quality and timing of support for care leavers.
- Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman reports on fostering (2025, PDF), adoption support (2024, PDF) and children's complaints (updated 2025, PDF): access to support, carers' information and support, complaint delays and acting on findings.
- Children's Commissioner's Help at Hand findings: advocacy, suitable care, unexplained moves and maintaining important relationships.
Who can rate
- Adults who had direct involvement with the service: people who received support, and parents or carers who were directly involved.
- People rate their own experience only. Colleagues, people paid or rewarded to rate, and second-hand accounts are not counted.
- One active rating per person for each service, covering every year of their experience. Changing your mind means withdrawing and rating again, not adding votes.
What we check
Accounts have confirmed an email address and declared direct involvement. Involvement has not been independently verified.
An email account isn't the same as one person, and we don't treat it that way. Every rating is checked before it counts, and unusual patterns are held for a closer look. Negative ratings are never held just for being negative.
Email addresses from councils, children's services trusts, public services such as the NHS and the police, and charities that work with families can't be used to rate. Ratings sent from a network where someone tried one of those addresses are checked more closely.
How scores are calculated
- Everyone who rates carries equal weight.
- Each person's overall figure is the average of the questions they answered. "Unable to assess" is left out; it counts as neither zero nor five.
- To count toward the overall score, a rating needs at least 3 questions answered. You do not need experience of every area, such as care or complaints, to rate the service.
- Each question's result uses only the answers to that question.
- Different questionnaire versions are not combined. Earlier answers stay attached to their original questions and do not count towards the new questionnaire's scores.
- An overall average can hide a serious concern in one area. Read the individual results and their answer counts alongside it.
- Scores are rounded to 1 decimal place at the final step only.
- Until a service has several ratings, its score is steadied towards the middle: we add 2 imaginary ratings of 3 out of 5 to the average. One very negative or very positive rating can't decide the score on its own, but still moves it the same way, and the effect fades as more people rate. Question results aren't steadied.
- Worker names given privately never change a score and never create a score for a worker.
When a score appears
- 1
- 3
- 3
A question's result waits for a few answers because one person's full set of answers could show who they are. Where there aren't enough ratings, we say so. A missing score is never shown as zero.
How results are worded
These bands describe the reported experience, not the quality of the service.
-
3.5 out of 5
Mostly positive experiences reported
-
2.5 out of 5
Mixed experiences reported
-
1.0 out of 5
Mostly negative experiences reported
Official inspections
Inspection outcomes appear separately from community ratings, exactly as the inspectorate published them. Each nation and service has its own inspectorate and framework, so we never convert one grade into another or combine them with community scores.
Children's services in England: Ofsted
Ofsted inspects every English council's children's services. Each inspection gives an overall effectiveness grade, and a grade for leadership, for children who need help and protection, for children in care and, since 2023, for care leavers. There are four grades:
- Outstanding. The highest grade.
- Good. The standard Ofsted expects every council to meet.
- Requires improvement to be good. Not yet good, although Ofsted found no widespread or serious failures leaving children harmed or at risk of harm.
- Inadequate. Widespread or serious failures leave children harmed or at risk of harm. Ofsted then makes regular monitoring visits.
Councils graded good or outstanding usually have a shorter inspection next time. Between inspections, Ofsted makes focused visits to look at one area of practice. Visits don't give grades: Ofsted publishes a letter setting out what it found.
Grades come from Ofsted's official statistics, which Ofsted updates once a year. Every week we check GOV.UK for a new release, and check each council's page on Ofsted's website for new reports and visit letters. If Ofsted has published an inspection report that its statistics don't include yet, the council's page says so and links to it. Reports stay on Ofsted's website: we link to them rather than copying them.
Wales
Care Inspectorate Wales inspects council social services in Wales. It doesn't give councils an overall grade, so each Welsh council's page lists its reports instead, linked to Care Inspectorate Wales's website. We check for new ones every week.
Workers
Pages rate the council or trust's service, not individual people. You can name a worker privately when you rate. That name isn't published or counted, and it isn't treated as proof that the person was involved.
Corrections and withdrawals
You can withdraw your own rating, or delete your whole account, at any time from your account page, and the score is recalculated without it. To report something that's wrong, contact us. While we check a reported problem, a score may be temporarily hidden.