Children's Services Inspections
Joint Area Review (JAR)
The JAR is a single coordinated inspection of all publicly funded services for children and young people within a local area.
The Joint Area Review for Southwark took place between February and April 2008. The inspectors evaluated the way local services contribute effectively to the outcomes achieved by children and young people growing up in Southwark, and also examined the leadership and management of these services, and the way they work together to support children and young people to:
- be healthy
- stay safe
- enjoy and achieve
- make a positive contribution
- achieve economic wellbeing.
These are the five Every Child Matters outcomes. Our local priorities, achievements and areas for development around these outcomes are set out in our children and young people's plan.
The key areas of focus standard to every JAR are:
- safeguarding
- looked after children
- children with learning difficulties and disabilities
- service management.
In Southwark, inspectors looked at two additional key areas of focus:
- the effectiveness of interagency cooperation in tackling youth crime and anti social behaviour
- the contribution of local services to support and challenge schools in raising attainment.
Joint Area Review report
Southwark's response to the JAR inspection report is outlined within the following action plan:
The key areas identified for development will be reviewed through the business planning process, and all actions and outcomes are immediate or within 6 months.
Youth inspection action plan
Following the inspection process of youth services, a youth inspection action plan has been finalised to respond to areas requiring development.
The Annual Performance Assessment (APA)
For the APA 2008, local authorities were asked to produce a self assessment, which would make key judgements about the contribution of council services to improving outcomes for children and young people, by
- focussing on evaluating the outcomes for children and young people and the impact of local children's services on improving these outcomes
- assessing how fair priorities are based on an accurate analysis of need
- evaluating the effectiveness of service delivery and service management
- assessing how well resources have been used to improve services and outcomes for children and young people, and to provide value for money
- providing evidence on how effectively services work together to improve outcomes for children and young people
- evaluating how well children and young people are consulted and what impact their views have on the planning of services
- showing how areas from the 2007 APA are being tackled in current plans, and what progress has been made in terms of improving outcomes.
For their APA submission, Southwark produced an updated review of the children and young people's plan, along with a self assessment of grades, and submitted this to Ofsted In June. Findings from the JAR fed into the evidence base for this review.
The corporate assessment
The Southwark JAR took place at the same time as the corporate assessment, which looked at how well the council engages with and leads its communities, delivers community priorities in partnership with others, and ensures continuous improvement across the range of council activities.
The Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA)
In December 2008, the JAR and the APA will be replaced by the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA), which will begin on April 1 2009. Similarly to the JAR and the APA, the CAA will jointly assess how well local services work together to improve outcomes for local people, and the effectiveness of individual organisations in delivering those outcomes. The first CAA reports will be published in November 2009.
There will be two main elements to this new performance framework:
- area assessment, ungraded, looking at how well local public services are delivering better results for local people and how they are likely to improve in the future
- organisation assessment, graded, looking at the overall effectiveness of individual public bodies such as councils, in managing performance and using resources.
Ofsted will be undertaking a three year rolling programme of inspection of services for looked after children and of safeguarding children and young people.
Other inspections will only take place when the annual assessments and evidence show weakness and where these weaknesses are not being addressed.
The CAA framework document is available to download from the Audit Commission website.
Contact us
Young Southwark
Tel: 020 7525 3674
young.southwark@southwark.gov.uk
Children's services
PO BOX 64529 London
SE1 5LX
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
|