Transcript Click to add title

Framework for the Inspection of
services for children in need of help
and protection, children looked after
and care leavers.
Gani Martins
Assistant Director Specialist Services
The Framework
 New framework published on 25th September 2013
 3 year universal programme - every local authority will have
one
 Comes into effect from November 2013
 Review of LSCB will happen in parallel
The key features of the framework:
 How well local authorities do things and the difference we
make – what are the evidence?
 How social workers and others work directly with families
and manage the risks involved – how good is this work?
 The quality of our interventions in families where risk
remains or intensifies
 The quality of management oversight and decision making.
 How well we help, protect and care for children in our
statutory services
 How much we know about the services we provide
(with partners) for children living in violent homes,
where there is drug or alcohol misuse or the mental ill
health of a parent / carer
 Leadership oversight
 Clear priorities, and learning from feedback
 Accountabilities – particularly the LSCB and
operational practice
Areas of particular focus:
 Children and young people missing from care and risks of sexual
exploitation
 Children and young people missing from education
 The promotion of education and schooling for children who are
looked after
 Children living out of the area
 The early help offer and assessment
 The quality of child protection plans – how long, why, what’s
changing?
 Whether assessments are events or an engagement with families
 The quality of work with families where the plan is for children to
return home
 The quality of care planning for children looked after
 The quality of housing and support for care leavers
The key judgements:
 The overall effectiveness of services and
arrangements for children who need help and
protection, children looked after and care leavers
 The experiences and progress of children who need
help and protection
 The experiences and progress of children looked after
and achieving permanence including graded
judgements on:
− Adoption
− The experiences and progress of care leavers
 Leadership, management and governance
Children who are looked after
 Two graded judgements within the key judgement
− Adoption and care leavers
 These influence but are unlikely alone to trigger inadequacy.
 Adoption – Statutory requirement for a range of options to
meet needs
 Care leavers – their journeys matters
The new Judgement points
 Four-point judgement: inadequate, requires improvement,
good, outstanding
 Requires improvement replaces adequate
 Inadequate in any key judgement limits overall effectiveness to
inadequate
 Looking for good – where evidence exceeds it is outstanding
and where ‘good’ is not yet in place, it will ‘require improvement’
 Inadequate is defined as widespread or serious failing in either
protection or/and safeguarding and promoting the welfare of
looked after children
 Review and graded judgement of the effectiveness of LSCB
How the inspection will be carried out:
 Conducted over a four week period – 11 working days
 Inspection starts on a Tuesday – Lead Inspector calls – sets
up the inspection and outlines the information required and
the timeframes
 Wednesday – Lead and small team arrives on site by
9:00am – case sampling information available by the end of
Wednesday
 Annex A information
 Front door focus and identifying children and young people
living out of the authority area
 Ask LA to audit cases of 18 children and young people
 Track the experiences and quality of practice in the cases of
at least 30 children and young people
 Sample the experiences and quality of practice in the cases
of at least 50 children and young people at key thresholds
(e.g. early help, child protection)
 Observations of practice – involving children, young people,
families, carers
 Talking to stakeholders
 Management oversight – purposeful and inclusive, regular,
challenging, supportive, evaluative and leads to practice
and decisions that are effective for the child/young person
Children and Young people who live out of their
home areas
 Identify minimum of two children and young people
living in a children’s home that is not in the local
authority area
 Visit the children and young people during the course
of the inspection to understand the plan for them, the
quality of care, the help they have been given and the
oversight of the local authority
Fostering and Adoption
 The new single inspection replaces the separate
inspections of local authority and fostering services and
adoption agencies
 Case tracking and sampling
 Recruitment, preparation, training, support to foster carers
and prospective adopters
 Foster carers and prospective adopter case files
 Adoption support
 Interview panel chairs
 Meet foster carers – chair of fostering association
The Feedback
 Meet the Director of Children’s Services and 4 key others on
Wednesday morning of week 4
 Share the detail of the evidence that the team used to reach
judgement
 Clarify any outstanding issues
 Discuss areas for improvement
 Formal feedback with statutory partners, Lead Member,
Mayor/Leader and Chief Executive
The Report
 Key decision making points – emerging themes relating to
specific age groups of children and young people
 Missing from home, care and education
 At risk of sexual exploitation
 Living out of the authority area
 Achieving the right permanence plan
 Waiting for adoption
 In need of adoption support services
These will be short, bulleted report:
 Summarised key findings written for children and
young people as well as the local authority
 Areas for priority improvement and areas for
development
 Key findings for each judgement area
 Draft report sent to LA within 15 days of inspection
 Draft LSCB report sent to Chair and partners
 Inspection report and review of LSCB report published
as one document following factual accuracy
 Copies to HMIC, HMI Probation, CQC, HMI Prisons