Youth Offending Service - Health Check
Client: North East Lincolnshire Council - Children's Services
Project Value: £22k
Duration: 3 months
Project Overview
The Authority has recently achieved an improved Joint Area Review and APA rating. We had identified significant weaknesses in the Youth Offending Services in a previous Health Check and these were borne out by the subsequent external inspection findings. The Authority undertook a major restructuring of the Service, removing the management team and a number of staff. The service is due to be re-inspected in Spring 2008.
We were asked to provide a further health check to assess the likelihood of the service being ready to face this inspection with confidence.
We used the Ofsted framework and our consultants’ experience of similar services across the country to provide a health check report within a very short time frame. The review covered the service, its Strategic and Operational Board and the preventative work of the Youth Inclusion Support Panel (YISP). The work was completed within two weeks and the report a further two week to provide the longest period for required development work possible.
CPC’s Role
We worked closely at service and at strategic level to understand the extent and nature of the restructure, the potential of the new teams, the roles and structures of the Strategic and Operational Board, and the current performance against national criteria and performance targets. We provided a small team with relevant experience to review the service against the framework, scrutinizing data and documents, interviewing strategic and operational leaders, staff, partner organisations, and providing in depth ‘reads’ of a sample of case files to test for the integrity of practice and the extent to which safeguarding requirements had been met.
Client Benefits
The Authority was given a clear picture of overall progress since the previous inspection, against all of the issues identified in their Ofsted report, and against which they will be re-assessed in the Spring.
We identified gaps in the plans and predicted the factors which will effect success (risk assessment).
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