Safeguarding Children: Ofsted and Regulatory Failure

This article analyses two aspects of the regulatory conduct of Ofsted in protecting children from abuse by strangers. The first concerns the problems associated with child protection and safeguarding in the context of facilitating multicultural norms whereby certain social behaviours which would be unacceptable in one culture can be tolerated or condoned in another. The second aspect arises because, following Ofsted's failure to protect thousands of children from child abuse in many UK cities, children's social services' departments may have adopted strategic behaviour which may protect them rather than the children.