AN UNANNOUNCED inspection of Nottingham City Council's children's services has identified a number of weaknesses in the way it cares for young people.

Last month, Ofsted inspected the council's contact, referral and assessment arrangements for children who have been abused or are in care.

The report has been published this week.

In a number of cases seen by inspectors, records did not show that action had been taken to safeguard children after a risk of abuse had been identified.

Managers have now addressed the issue, Ofsted have confirmed.

Inconsistencies between teams in the way they do their jobs were also found by the inspectors.

Cases of children who had been abused or were at risk of abuse were found to be "poorly" evaluated in some instances.

Full background checks and histories were not always taken into account, even though this is seen as essential evidence when dealing with abused children and their future.

In a letter to Ian Curryer, the city council's corporate director of children's services, Ofsted's Heather Brown said: "The quality and potential effectiveness of initial assessments vary between the duty teams.

"Managerial decisions and the reasons for a course of action are not consistently recorded.

"Information referred by some partner agencies about incidents of domestic abuse is of poor quality providing insufficient information to evaluate risk to children."

Ofsted also found one team is located in a building that has no access for disabled people, even though it receives visitors.

Despite the weaknesses identified, Ms Brown, Ofsted divisional manager for social care safeguarding, said "priority action" was not needed.

Strengths in the department were also found. They included "a strong sense of team work among staff", "good formal and informal support from managers" and "hard-working and enthusiastic duty teams".

Coun David Mellen, portfolio holder for children's services, said: "We are proud of the good work going on but equally clear on what needs to be done."