CQC and Ofsted changes affect Health Providers
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The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is conducting its child protection inspection programme over the next two years - ahead of the Ofsted multi agency inspection regime due to be introduced in 2015. GPs, health visitors, school nurses, hospitals and mental health services will now be inspected on child protection procedures and the quality of the journey through services for a child. 110 local authority areas will be targeted with priority given to those with the greatest risk , starting with inspection of services for Looked After Children.
This will see the CQC working with Ofsted and inspectorates for police, prisons and probation on a single inspection in relation to children’s services.
A spokesperson for the CQC said this risk had been determined by the latest inspection findings, information from serious case reviews, information from other inspectors, whistle-blowing and safeguarding information.
“In addition to checking safeguarding arrangements, inspectors will examine how children in the care of local authorities have their health needs met,” the spokesperson added.
Inspectors will check:
• Do health staff have the right training?
• Are professionals making timely and accurate referrals to mental health and substance misuse services?
• Do acute services have alert systems to identify and track children considered to be at risk?
• Do children in care have their health needs assessed and managed?
• Are services generally safe, effective, caring, well-led and responsive to children’s needs?
Click on the links below to track plans by Ofsted to evaluate how well front line workers in universal and specialist agencies are helping and protecting childre and young people. Sir Michael Wilshaw has said that following discussions with local government representatives and after assessing the results of initial pilots, he has taken the decision to defer the proposed new multi-agency child protection inspections involving a number of other inspectorate to 2015.
Proposals for Joint Inspection of Multi Agency Children's Services
Ofsted Single Inspection Framework
Ofsted Good Practice Reviews - share innovation
Professor Munro leads the changes - you may need to cut and paste this link:
Wandsworth leads the way with Multi agency training using Signs of Safety Licenced Trainer
Ofsted quote:
'Through our joint approach we will evaluate how well front-line workers in universal and specialist agencies are helping and protecting children and young people. Through tracking the experiences of individual children we will be able to consider the practice of a range of professionals such as health visitors, school nurses, GPs, the police, accident and emergency departments, maternity services and adult services such as adult mental health and drug treatment services in identifying children who are at risk of suffering, or are suffering, harm from abuse or neglect. We will also consider the quality of practice in services providing intensive and/or on-going support to those children and young people identified as being at risk of harm.'
http://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/news/1106857/ofsted-unveils-inspection-framework-childrens-serviceslllhttp://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/news/1106857/ofsted-unveils-inspection-framework-childrens-servicesThe regulator’s new inspection framework for children’s services, published today, will start being used from November to assess the quality of all local authority services for vulnerable children, including those in a care placement, at risk of harm, care leavers up to 25 years old and those not in the education system.
The framework will use a standard four-point scale – outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate – used by Ofsted to grade services in the education and early years sectors to score the overall quality of children’s social care services.
A department’s performance and grade in three key service areas – the experiences and progress of children who need help and protection; the experiences and progress of children who are looked after (including adoption and care leavers); and leadership, management and governance – will be used to set the overall score.
If a local authority is judged "inadequate" in any of the three key areas, it will automatically be judged "inadequate" overall.
Debbie Jones, Ofsted national director for social care, said the new framework has children and young people and the quality of professional practice at its heart, and captures the “journey” of the young person through the care system.
She said: “It is our ambition to establish ‘good’ as the new minimum and for this to become the agreed standard for all services for children and young people. It is right to introduce the harder test asking what difference we are all making and I am impressed with the extent to which the new framework sets this out.”
But Andrew Webb, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), said he “fundamentally disagreed” with the use of graded judgments.
“Graded judgments can and do hide a multitude of strengths and weaknesses, and there is no certainty that two local authorities with the same judgments are providing the same quality of service and achieving the same outcomes for children in their area,” he said.
Webb added that using narrative judgments, setting out more detail on what was working well and needed to be improved, would have created a more transparent regulation system and enabled progress to be more clearly tracked.
The Local Government Association and Society of Local Authority Chief Executives said they stood by their previous criticism that the framework would produce “unrepresentative judgments of authorities' performance”.
All 152 local authorities in England will be inspected under the new framework over the next three years, with those judged as "inadequate" facing re-inspection within 12 to 18 months.
Ofsted plans to consult widely next year on the development of a multi-agency inspection regime that evaluates and judges the contribution of health, police, probation and prison services in the help, care and protection of children and young people, and which is set to be introduced in 2015.
Two other frameworks are also published today for inspecting voluntary adoption agencies and independent fostering services. Both take immediate effect.
- See more at: http://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/news/1106857/ofsted-unveils-inspection-framework-childrens-services#sthash.cuxNly5s.dpufOfsted is to push ahead with the introduction of a tougher inspection regime for children’s services, ignoring warnings from the sector that the system is too simplistic and will fail to deliver improvements.
Debbie Jones says Ofsted's ambition is to establish "good" as the new minimum for children's services.
The regulator’s new inspection framework for children’s services, published today, will start being used from November to assess the quality of all local authority services for vulnerable children, including those in a care placement, at risk of harm, care leavers up to 25 years old and those not in the education system.
The framework will use a standard four-point scale – outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate – used by Ofsted to grade services in the education and early years sectors to score the overall quality of children’s social care services.
A department’s performance and grade in three key service areas – the experiences and progress of children who need help and protection; the experiences and progress of children who are looked after (including adoption and care leavers); and leadership, management and governance – will be used to set the overall score.
If a local authority is judged "inadequate" in any of the three key areas, it will automatically be judged "inadequate" overall.
Debbie Jones, Ofsted national director for social care, said the new framework has children and young people and the quality of professional practice at its heart, and captures the “journey” of the young person through the care system.
She said: “It is our ambition to establish ‘good’ as the new minimum and for this to become the agreed standard for all services for children and young people. It is right to introduce the harder test asking what difference we are all making and I am impressed with the extent to which the new framework sets this out.”
But Andrew Webb, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), said he “fundamentally disagreed” with the use of graded judgments.
“Graded judgments can and do hide a multitude of strengths and weaknesses, and there is no certainty that two local authorities with the same judgments are providing the same quality of service and achieving the same outcomes for children in their area,” he said.
Webb added that using narrative judgments, setting out more detail on what was working well and needed to be improved, would have created a more transparent regulation system and enabled progress to be more clearly tracked.
The Local Government Association and Society of Local Authority Chief Executives said they stood by their previous criticism that the framework would produce “unrepresentative judgments of authorities' performance”.
All 152 local authorities in England will be inspected under the new framework over the next three years, with those judged as "inadequate" facing re-inspection within 12 to 18 months.
Ofsted plans to consult widely next year on the development of a multi-agency inspection regime that evaluates and judges the contribution of health, police, probation and prison services in the help, care and protection of children and young people, and which is set to be introduced in 2015.
Ofsted is to push ahead with the introduction of a tougher inspection regime for children’s services, ignoring warnings from the sector that the system is too simplistic and will fail to deliver improvements.
Debbie Jones says Ofsted's ambition is to establish "good" as the new minimum for children's services.
The regulator’s new inspection framework for children’s services, published today, will start being used from November to assess the quality of all local authority services for vulnerable children, including those in a care placement, at risk of harm, care leavers up to 25 years old and those not in the education system.
The framework will use a standard four-point scale – outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate – used by Ofsted to grade services in the education and early years sectors to score the overall quality of children’s social care services.
A department’s performance and grade in three key service areas – the experiences and progress of children who need help and protection; the experiences and progress of children who are looked after (including adoption and care leavers); and leadership, management and governance – will be used to set the overall score.
If a local authority is judged "inadequate" in any of the three key areas, it will automatically be judged "inadequate" overall.
Debbie Jones, Ofsted national director for social care, said the new framework has children and young people and the quality of professional practice at its heart, and captures the “journey” of the young person through the care system.
She said: “It is our ambition to establish ‘good’ as the new minimum and for this to become the agreed standard for all services for children and young people. It is right to introduce the harder test asking what difference we are all making and I am impressed with the extent to which the new framework sets this out.”
But Andrew Webb, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), said he “fundamentally disagreed” with the use of graded judgments.
“Graded judgments can and do hide a multitude of strengths and weaknesses, and there is no certainty that two local authorities with the same judgments are providing the same quality of service and achieving the same outcomes for children in their area,” he said.
Webb added that using narrative judgments, setting out more detail on what was working well and needed to be improved, would have created a more transparent regulation system and enabled progress to be more clearly tracked.
The Local Government Association and Society of Local Authority Chief Executives said they stood by their previous criticism that the framework would produce “unrepresentative judgments of authorities' performance”.
All 152 local authorities in England will be inspected under the new framework over the next three years, with those judged as "inadequate" facing re-inspection within 12 to 18 months.
Ofsted plans to consult widely next year on the development of a multi-agency inspection regime that evaluates and judges the contribution of health, police, probation and prison services in the help, care and protection of children and young people, and which is set to be introduced in 2015.