Inspection Summary for Youth Support Services Staff

This page contains the Inspection Summary for Youth Support Services Staff. It includes information about the Corporate Assessment (CA), the Annual Performance Assessment (APA), the Joint Area Review (JAR) and the Charter Mark inspection.

Latest: Charter Mark Inspection Timetable (June 08)

Introduction

There is now no separate inspection process for Youth Support Services work. The past frameworks have been subsumed within the broader integrated frameworks of CA (Corporate Assessment) and more specifically APA (Annual Performance Assessment) and JAR (Joint Area Review). The process of inspection this time is:

• more distant from YSS than in the past;
• clear about the integrated offer expected to young people; and
• the focus of the JAR on vulnerable young people.

If any specific involvement of staff is requested you will be notified.

The following gives an overview of the process and the timescale for the inspections this autumn in Oxfordshire.

Overview of the two processes

The Corporate Assessment (CA) and the Joint Area Review (JAR) focus on similar and contrasting aspects of services provided for local people:

• corporate assessment examines how the council is working corporately, and with its partners, to improve services and deliver improved outcomes for local people. It:
• examines the political, managerial and community leadership of the council
• measures how well councils understand their local communities
• assesses how well this understanding translates into councils’ ambitions and priorities
• judges councils’ capacity to deliver these ambitions and priorities, and their achievements.
  As part of its judgment on a council’s achievement, corporate assessment reports on the contribution of the council to the quality of outcomes for children and young people. The joint area review provides the judgments for this aspect of the assessment.
  
• joint area reviews focus primarily on the most vulnerable children and young people and use the most recent annual performance assessment (APA) as a starting point for the inspection. Joint area reviews cover publicly-funded services for children and young people in the local area, including those that are directly managed or commissioned by the council, as well as services provided by health and youth justice services. The reviews also cover the leadership and management of services for children and young people and, in particular, the way that such services work together to improve outcomes. The JAR evaluates how well all services, when taken together, improve the well-being of children and young people in a local area.

Joint Area Review Process

It has been agreed that modifications to the joint area review arrangements will be introduced. From now on, JARs will undertake specific investigations covering:

• aspects where performance is judged as weak in the APA
• groups of children and young people who are most at risk, in particular:
  • those that require safeguarding
  • looked after children
  • those with learning difficulties
  • those with disabilities
  • those who are not doing well enough, or where insufficient information is known about their outcomes

A greater number of additional investigations will be undertaken in local areas where services appear to be less effective.

There are some significant differences in the procedures for the joint area review compared with those completed earlier:

• there will no longer be a requirement to submit a self assessment. The most recent Children and Young People’s Plan will be used instead
• the survey of children and young people (Tellus) will not be undertaken solely for the review
• a neighbourhood study in a specific neighbourhood will not be undertaken
• there will be no grades given for children’s services and health services for children .

Composition of Oxfordshire inspection team

The joint area review inspection team will be led by Mary Ryan. The deputy lead inspector will be Collette Elliott-Cooper. Both colleagues are from Ofsted.

Other members of the review team that will visit the local area will be drawn from Ofsted (including education, social care and adult learning specialists), the Healthcare Commission (HC), the Audit Commission (AC) and possible HMI of Constabulary (HMIC).

The corporate assessment inspection team will be led by Bobby Grant from the Audit Commission.

Other members of the team will include a team member, a peer member, a peer officer and a project support officer.

 

Timeline

Date	APA
July	Stage 1 Scrutiny: Previous APA/JAR findings; 2007 briefing materials; CYPP and its review; Supporting information from the LA; Inspectorate round-table discussion Stage 2 Scrutiny: Children’s Services dataset; Tellus2 results; School survey results.
September- October	Stage 3: On site day with the council: Test hypotheses; Emerging feedback Stage 4: Reporting: APA letter writing; Consistency checking; Quality assurance
Date	Corporate Assessment/JAR (Dates provision – guidance only except fieldwork fortnight)
November 16 19 20 21 22 23	Team on site to review self-assessment performance data and other information provided by council and stakeholders
November 23	CA round table meeting with council and its partners to agree the focus on fieldwork
December	Jar fieldwork fortnight (3-14 December)