Ofsted shake-up of children’s services inspections following Munro review
22nd August 2011
Following the publication of Eileen Munro’s review of the child protection system in May, Ofsted has explained how children’s services inspections will work in the future as part of an ongoing consultation.
The proposals in the Munro review were accepted by the government, and Ofsted is consulting now on how to put them into practice effectively. The consultation will run until September 30th this year.
Ofsted intends to replace the current system of inspecting local authority children’s services with two-week-long unannounced checks, as of May 2012. The inspections will focus particularly on the quality of child protection and early intervention services. In accordance with Eileen Munro’s report, they will not assess the council’s provision in isolation, but consider the child’s ‘journey’ through various local services, also taking into account health, education, police, probation, and the justice system, and their respective impact on child protection.
As well as these unannounced inspections, Ofsted will be making changes to the type of information it gathers. The proposals suggest that inspections will be primarily based upon the experiences of individual children, with inspectors spending time with children and families as well as front-line social workers and managers. Direct observation will also be a key facet of the checks; inspectors may attend child protection case conferences or observe social work visits.
Under the proposals, struggling local authorities will be inspected more often than their high-performing counterparts. Councils that are judged to be inadequate would potentially be re-inspected every 18 months, whereas those marked as satisfactory would have 3 years between inspections, and good or outstanding authorities would have 5 years.
It is proposed that a small team of inspectors would begin the unannounced checks by examining the quality of referral and assessment, risk management, and the effectiveness of multi-agency work. They would then progress through the remainder of the inspection, taking in all other aspects of a child’s journey through local services.
More detail on these proposals is expected to follow in the coming weeks…
