What is the Joint Area Review?

What is the JAR?

The Joint Area Review is part of the new integrated inspection framework of Children’s Services and will examine how well the Council and its partners are contributing to the well-being of children and young people.

Well-being is defined in terms of the five outcomes described in Every Child Matters:

Be healthy
Stay safe
Enjoy and achieve
Make a positive contribution
Achieve economic well-being

The JAR is a single, co-ordinated inspection of the whole range of services provided by the publicly funded agencies and organisations which together make up Oldham Children’s Trust. It replaces the separate inspections of local education authorities, social services, connexions and provision for 14-19 year olds.

The focus of all JARs is on assessing how well all agencies work together to improve the outcomes for vulnerable groups of children and young people:

Looked after children and young people (children in care)
Children with a learning difficulty and/or disability
Children in need of safeguarding

The JAR will enable us to consider the quality of our services, show how well we are all working together and identify what we are achieving and what we can change to improve the outcomes for children and young people in Oldham.

What does the JAR involve?

The JAR includes:

Analysis week – the inspectors provided us with a list of initial documents and a list of additional documents that they required as part of the inspection. Between 21-25 July the inspectors were on site to begin to read these documents together with a range of supporting information that we chose to provide to demonstrate how we have improved outcomes for children and young people. These included a range of case studies around the six areas for investigation: safeguarding, looked after children, children and young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, the impact of the 14-19 strategy on outcomes for children and young people, equality and diversity and service management.
Case file tracking – we provided the Lead Inspector with a list of the details of 100 children and young people who were known to one or more service; 35 looked after children, 35 children and young people with a learning difficulty and/or disability, from which they made a random selection of 10 for examination during Analysis Week. Whilst on-site, the inspectors looked in detail at around 80 case files from all agencies involved with the children and young people selected and decided to follow up three cases during fieldwork.
The Inspectors reviewed the quality of file management and compliance with any statutory guidelines and tracked the process involved when a child or young person had beenreferred to another service. This was to establish that an auditable trail existed between services, that effective links had been established, and that the records in the ‘receiving services’ were available and appropriately reflected the ongoing delivery of integrated services to the child or young person concerned.
On-site fieldwork – the inspectors will be on site between 15-26 September observing services in different settings across Oldham. They will meet with a range of staff, particularly those engaged in front-line service delivery, partners, children and young people and their parents/carers. As part of the case file tracking exercise, whilst the inspectors did not request to meeting with any of the three children and young people selected for follow-up, they will meet with a small number of professionals involved and with a parent. During fieldwork, there will be an inspection of each of our two Social Care Duty Rooms during which the inspectors may chose to look at a number of randomly selected case files.

When will the JAR take place?

The JAR process is well underway and there is an awful lot of work to be done by all partner agencies to continue improving services and to prepare for the inspection following the tentative feedback received during Analysis Week.

Current activity has involved the production of a detailed action plan to co-ordinate response to areas for further exploration, including evidence gathering. In addition, we have scheduled a number of briefings for staff and partners; general briefings for everyone; briefings that are more specific for those directly involved; and individual support for those being interviewed. We are also developing a fact pack covering a number of issues identified for further exploration and working on a complex fieldwork schedule for 15-26 September, when the inspectors will be back in Oldham.

Who carries out the inspection?

The JAR will be carried out by a multi-disciplinary team of professionals drawn from a number of Government inspectorates including:

Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI)
Audit Commission (AC)
Healthcare Commission (HC)
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC)
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMI Prisons)
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation (HMI Probation)
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Court Administration (HMICA)
HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI)
Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted)

Find out more about the inspectors

What happens following the JAR?

The results will be published in a report within eight weeks of the review.

When the draft report is available in late October 2008 we will have an opportunity to respond. Following this the report will be finalised and all judgements will be moderated independently. The final report will be published on the Council’s website in January 2009.

The Council’s Children, Young People and Families Directorate is then required to consult its partners and produce an action plan outlining how it will address any issues identified in the report. If the report raises any significant concerns about an individual service or function, a detailed follow-up inspection may be commissioned to carry out a more in-depth examination.

The results of the JAR will also be used for the children and young people element of the Council’s Corporate Assessment (CA).