Why we built Public Trust
Your experience should not disappear because a complaint has been closed. Public Trust gives people an independent way to make how they were treated count.
Independent, people-powered ratings
See how councils' children's services treat families
Find your council in England or Wales, see what other families reported about its children's social care, and add your own structured rating.
- Your email stays private
- No public comments
- Checked before it counts
Find your council
Every council with children's social care duties
In England and Wales, children's social care is run by councils. You can find and rate all of them.
League table
How do councils compare?
Every council ranked by what families reported about its children's services, lowest-rated first, for England and Wales or your region.
See the league tableThree steps
How it works
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Find your council
Search by the council's name, or your town, village or postcode, then open its children's services page.
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Rate your experience
Answer specific questions about the service. Choose unable to assess where needed. No comment boxes or uploads.
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It's checked before it counts
Confirm your email and your rating is checked before it's added to a score. Your email is never shown publicly.
What you'll find
What each council page shows
Every council with children's social care duties has a page, even before anyone has rated it.
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1
What families reported
Scores from specific questions, how many ratings they're based on, and when the experiences happened. A council with no ratings yet says so: it's never a score of zero.
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The official inspection
Ofsted's grades for English councils, and Care Inspectorate Wales reports for Welsh ones, kept separate from the ratings and linked to the source.
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Inspection reports
The latest reports and letters about the council's children's services, from the inspectorate's own website.
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Complaints and help
The official routes: the council's complaints process, the Ombudsman, the regulator and advocacy services. Rating here isn't a complaint.
Reading a score
What the ratings mean
What they show
- Averages of what people with direct experience reported.
- How many ratings each score is based on, and when the experiences happened.
- Official inspection results, shown separately and linked to the source.
What they don't show
- Findings of wrongdoing by the service or anyone who works there.
- Scores for individual social workers.
- A score of zero where there aren't enough ratings yet.
News
Latest from Public Trust
What's next
More public services are coming
We're starting with councils' children's social services. Other services that families rely on will follow, each with its own ratings beside its official inspections.
- Live now Children's social services
- Coming later Adult social care
- Coming later Special educational needs (SEND)
- Your idea What should we cover next? Tell us which services matter most to you
Can't find your council? Try searching for your town, village or postcode, or browse every council from A to Z. If it's still missing, ask us to add it.