Children's services inspection

New arrangements for inspection of children's services at local authority area level were prompted by the proposals set out in the Every Child Matters green paper and provided for in the Children Act 2004.

Integrated inspection of children's services, replacing inspections of individual services, is a driver of improvement and a key part of the effort to rationalise planning, accountability and performance management.

Services are monitored through two inspection processes. The first is an annual performance assessment (APA) of each council's children's services. The second is a programme of joint area reviews (JARs), which involve greater depth than the APA and also range beyond council services to include, for example, health and police services. Both processes look at how services are working together locally to improve outcomes for children and young people. They are intended to:

Target inspection activity on clear outcomes for children, and be focussed on the user, unconstrained by service boundaries
Make arrangements for the effective coordination of inspection activity to prevent duplication and to reduce burdens and pressures on those inspected

The first APA round took place in 2005, and there will be a JAR in every local authority area in England between 2005 and 2008. An APA results in a published letter to the local authority, and a JAR results in a published report.

Both APAs and JARs operate under the overall Framework for Inspection of Children's Services, defining the purpose, coverage, conduct, reporting and quality of inspections. The framework lists the key judgements to be made by the inspectors. The Every Child Matters Outcomes Framework, in turn, connects the key judgements to the national indicators and targets, and to the five Every Child Matters outcomes.

JARs and APAs come to an end in December 2008 and are replaced by Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) which begins on 1 April 2009. CAA will focus on people and places, with inspectorates jointly assessing how well local services work together to improve outcomes for local people, and the effectiveness of individual organisation in delivering those outcomes. CAA will include identification of the strengths and weaknesses in outcomes and services for children and young people. CAA assessments will be made based on a national range of indicators (the National Indicator Set), findings from inspection and regulation, and a review of the progress that has been made against targets in Local and Muliti-Area Agreements. The first Comprehensive Area Assessment reports will be published in November 2009. CAA will include a three-yearly local authority inspection of children in care and safeguarding services from 1 April 2009 to be led by Ofsted.

Key resources on Ofsted website

APA letters and JAR reports for individual local authorities

Every Child Matters: The Framework for the Inspection of Children's Services(July 2005)

Timetable for remaining JARs to 2008

Narrowing the gap: inspection of children's services (April 2007)

Joint area reviews of children's services from April 2007

Ofsted Children's Services

Ofsted 2007/08 Annual Report (November 2008)