Unit 10 Caring for Children and Young People

D1 In order to complete D1 write a newspaper article that evaluates the regulation of care provision for looked after children and young people to reassure all parents and society that her children will be provided for appropriately.

Inspection services Which is the organisation responsible for overseeing that children and young peoples’ services work effectively ?

www.ofsted.gov.uk Task 1 Using the website above find out: What Ofsted stands for ? What do they inspect and regulate ? What are their responsibilities ? What are their priorities ? Use the information most relevant to services for children and young people especially in care.

OFSTED Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. They inspect and regulate services that care for children and young people, and services providing education and skills for learners of all ages e.g. schools, colleges, adoption and fostering services, residential units.

Responsibilities inspecting maintained schools and academies, some independent schools, and many other educational institutions and programmes outside of higher education inspecting childcare, adoption and fostering agencies and initial teacher training publishing reports of our findings so they can be used to improve the overall quality of education and training regulating a range of early years and children’s social care services, making sure they’re suitable for children and potentially vulnerable young people reporting to policymakers on the effectiveness of these services

Priorities in 2014 - 2015 consult on new shorter but more regular inspections develop a common inspection framework for a more coherent and consistent approach across early years, schools and further education providers from September 2015 contract directly with inspectors for education and further education and skills, rather than through a third party supplier (helping us ensure that inspectors are effectively sourced, trained and deployed) continue to strengthen Ofsted’s regional structure and develop better local intelligence and stronger relationships with key regional partners further develop the integrated inspection model for children’s services, which puts the user at the centre of inspection

Ofsted They aim to achieve high standards of excellence across all services for all children and young people. If services are not providing such services to a high standard they monitor and make recommendations to the organisations. They do have powers to close down organisations.

Weekly inspections Ofsted carry out hundreds of inspections weekly and regulatory visits throughout England and publish the results online. Ofsted have a set framework (criteria) by which to measure services performance and a grading criteria.

Framework for social care Look at the overall effectiveness of services and arrangements for children looked after, care leavers and children who need help and protection. The overall effectiveness judgement is a cumulative judgement derived from: the experiences and progress of children who need help and protection the experiences and progress of children looked after and achieving permanence including graded judgements on: adoption performance the experiences and progress of care leavers leadership, management and governance.

Ofsted inspection judgements Grade What does this mean ? 1 Outstanding - A service which provides an exceptional quality of care and significantly exceeds minimum requirements. 2 Good - A service which provides a high quality of care that exceeds minimum requirements. 3 Adequate - A service which meets minimum requirements but needs to improve the quality of care it provides. 4 Inadequate - A service where minimum requirements are not met and the quality of care has serious weaknesses.

The process of inspection Organisations will be given different notice times for inspections to happen. Ofsted can visit from 1 – 6 days, depending on level of inspection and previous data. They then write a report, this is sent to the organisation for comment (to check factual accuracy).

The process - continued The organisation must return the draft inspection report within 5 days. The Ofsted inspection report is put online for all to access including parents, other organisations, potential commissioners and competitors.

Evaluate the role of Ofsted Strengths Weaknesses A strength would be that services which are graded a 3 or 4 are inspected on a regular basis to ensure improvements. Ofsted power to shut down institutions if they only achieve a grade 4. Achieving an outstanding grade means that they will be likely to provide care to a wide range of children and young people who need to be looked after. Ofsted ensures that all services for learners, children and young people are to an excellent standard. A weakness is that OFSTED not checking services graded 1 or 2 on a regular basis allows for the possibility that those services can go downhill. Frequency of visits could allow for further negative outcomes Ofsted inspections put a lot of pressure on practitioner to achieve a high grading which is not necessarily a truthful representation of their abilities.

Strength 1 Ofsted is helpful in reassuring parents and society that children and looked after young people are appropriately cared for, as services such as foster home and residential homes which are graded a 3 or a 4 are more likely to be inspected on a regular basis to ensure that improvements are made to prevent negative procedures such as abuse, maltreatment and neglect from occurring. This is helpful as children residing in those settings are more likely to find that their individual needs are met and that their risk of abuse, and maltreatment is greatly reduced.