What it says on the Jar, by Shane Flynn

7 Sep 06
Children's needs involve broader issues than exam results and school performance. A new inspection system assesses the way they are dealt with holistically. Shane Flynn looks at the results

08 September 2006

Children's needs involve broader issues than exam results and school performance. A new inspection system assesses the way they are dealt with holistically. Shane Flynn looks at the results

The inspection of children's services was reshaped and broadened in September 2005 with the formal introduction of Joint Area Reviews, which were designed to replace the previous inspections of local authorities' education and social services departments.

Under the auspices of the Office for Standards in Education, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and eight other regulatory bodies, the reviews are designed to contribute to the Audit Commission's Comprehensive Performance Assessments.

In December 2006, the first annual CPA scores that take full account of Jar data will be published. It is already possible, though, to examine the results of the area reviews to date and compare their approach with the previous inspection system.

The Jar process is wide ranging – unsurprisingly, given the number of agencies involved. However, few directors of children's services perhaps understood, when they took on the jobs created by the 2004 Children Act, that they would be dealing with issues potentially far removed from their previous areas of direct responsibility. These include youth offending teams, affordable housing, leisure and recreation facilities, bullying and racist incidents, social care referral processes and even dental care.

By August 2006, 29 reports had been published on the Ofsted website, including those covering pilot inspections undertaken before September 2005. These include about 320 recommendations. The graph on this page analyses these by officer/organisation responsible. Local councils are tasked with implementing most of these, although the directors of children's services will be responsible for direct management of many of them as well as those that are specified in reports as being for their attention. Health agencies must take specific responsibility for about 13% of the recommendations.

The recommendations reflect the breadth of the inspection process and indicate that the inspectors are concentrating on key issues. As part of the framework for inspection, Ofsted stated that it would pay particular attention to two areas: children and young people looked after by the council; and children and young people with learning difficulties and disabilities.

There are a relatively large number of recommendations in these areas but there has also been a strong focus on achieving outcomes for all children. This is reflected in the attention paid to the child protection process, planning and performance management, and the involvement of children and young people in planning processes.

Issues involving children and young people looked after by councils are the largest single subject of recommendations, closely followed by the child protection process. This is not surprising: the whole purpose of the integrated children's services programme is to improve arrangements for protecting and promoting the welfare of children in the wake of the Victoria Climbié case and the report of an inquiry into it by Lord Laming that followed.

There are, though, some less obvious developments. One particularly interesting aspect is that there there have only been four recommendations relating to school attainment in the 29 Jar reports published so far, despite Ofsted's fearsome reputation for focusing on this as the key issue. Separate detailed analysis of school attainment in each local authority area is undertaken as part of Annual Performance Assessments (APAs) of combined children's services. However, the inspectors draw on the APA findings when the Jar inspection gets under way – once every three years on the current cycle.

Does this amount to a fundamental change in thinking about what the focus of schools should be? Since 2002, teachers have had a duty to promote the welfare of children as well as their educational attainment. Under the recently published Childcare Act, local authorities are urged to regard caring for children and educating them, at least for the early years, as a holistic issue. The new focus for the inspectors on activities that support and promote attainment, rather than on the narrower question of academic results, is perhaps therefore a reflection of the spirit of the times.

The results of the Jars in terms of pure 'scores' is also interesting. Each Jar examines 12 areas:

  • The five outcomes for the government's Every Child Matters welfare reform programme: Being healthy; Staying safe; Enjoying and achieving; Making a positive contribution; and Achieving economic wellbeing
  • Service management
  • Capacity to improve: jointly among partners
  • Capacity to improve: council only
  • Children's services
  • Education services
  • Social care services
  • The health service

Each of these is graded on a scale of one to four, with four indicating a service that performs well above minimum requirements and one a service that falls below these requirements.

The average scores to date show that 'Making a positive contribution' is the most successful area and that 'Social care services' and 'Staying safe' are the areas that need most work. So far only two authorities have failed to score a three in at least one category. Four authorities have scored three across the board (Bournemouth, Slough, Stockport and Gateshead), and Coventry is the leader with 11 threes and a four for 'Making a positive contribution'. The inspectors particularly liked the way Coventry interacted with and supported children through 'excellent' mentoring approaches and the 'outstanding' contribution that young people made to the development of services.

This is a remarkable achievement for those authorities, given the complexity of the task and the short timescales involved, although some trend data are needed before we can fully judge the success of the integrated children's services programme. This will depend on a further round of inspections being approved.

There have been instances where councils have disputed the findings of the Jar process and some reports have been amended as a result. However, this has not tended to generate much public debate about the new inspection regime. Of some concern to authorities is the depth rather than the breadth of the inspectors' work. Under the traditional approach, there were separate reviews of education and social services by regulatory bodies created specifically for that purpose.

There was naturally a strategic element to these reviews but also room to focus on operational issues. For Jars, two weeks is spent on fieldwork but much of the work is done in advance through analysis of documents and self-assessment. Areas for particular focus are also drawn from the APAs that have already taken place. In seeking to bring all this material together into a report that is suitable for public consumption, it is inevitable that there is less room for detailed findings to be explored.

Some observers have argued that previous inspections were useful in drawing attention to problems that had arisen between local education authorities and schools, which elected members and senior managers then had to address. Middle-tier officers are not perhaps as well served by what is now a highly strategic reporting process. On financial issues, there are specific concerns about the depth of analysis achieved. In one instance, a lead officer who might have expected to be interviewed about financial issues appears to have been ignored. It is possible that pre-fieldwork analysis suggested that this was not an area that needed much attention.

Generally, the inspectors seem to be paying more attention to the management of finance across children's trust partners. By April 2006, all authorities in England had to compile – jointly with their children's trust partners – a children and young people's plan. Under the regulations, each of these plans was supposed to include a statement of financial commitment to joint children's services, detailing work on pooling budgets and plans for shifting resources to meet new commitments and mainstreaming specialised services. Few authorities completed such a statement, and a noticeable development in the Jar reports published in the latter half of 2006 is the increasing number of comments about value for money and the use of joint resources – an area that did not draw much attention in the early reports.

There might be more to say about both of these during the CPA process at the end of this year. However, as things stand, the Jars need to establish a broad view that recognises the sheer scale of the integrated children's services agenda. Specific issues are addressed at each site that might refer to long-standing problems or might reflect the immediate impact of this huge programme of change on councils and their partners. However, the wider questions around how the development of integrated services is achieving the five outcomes of Every Child Matters will not be answered for some time.

At present, though, there is a commitment to carry out just one round of Jars. A review of the process is already under way and the results of that will determine whether any commitment is made to engage in a second round. This will be undertaken, if at all, by a new combined inspection agency.

Shane Flynn is the lead adviser for the CIPFA's Children's Services Advisory Network (CSAN). The views expressed in this article are the author's and not those of CIPFA or IPF

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