What is JAR?
When will the JAR take place?
What does it mean to you?
Who will inspect us?
What will they be inspecting?
How will they make their judgements?
Information for school staff and governors?
How will children and young people have their say?
Does this mean the council will no longer be inspected?
How does the JAR relate to the Corporate Assessment of the Council?
When will we know our grade?
Will I be able to read the JAR report?
Where can I get more information?
What is Every Child Matters?
What is the Children & Young People’s Plan?
Over the three years from September 2005, all local authority services for children and young people, and the wide range of services from other agencies and organisations, will be subject to a joint area review (JAR).
The review provides a comprehensive report on the outcomes for children and young people in the local area. It replaces the separate inspections of local education authorities, local authorities' social services, Connexions services, and the provision for students aged 14–19. The JAR will be carried out at the same time as the Audit Commission's corporate assessment of the council, and is aligned with the inspection of youth offending teams undertaken by HMI Probation.
This year our Youth Service will receive a monitoring inspection in February 2008. The JAR inspection process for all councils will continue until 2009 when all 150 councils in England will have been inspected under the JAR framework.
| Date |
Event |
| October 2007 |
Set-up meeting and other key dates to be notified by Ofsted |
| 31 March 2008 |
Field Work Week 1 |
| 7 April 2008 |
Field Work Week 2 |
Further information will be received in the next couple of months, so keep your eyes peeled for newsletters, emails and team briefings.
All those involved in delivering services for children and young people, may be asked to take part in the inspection in some way. This could include:
- Providing information about your service
- Attending JAR Forum meetings
- Providing information for the self-assessment
- Participating in the Fieldwork fortnight focus groups and meetings
- Being visited by JAR inspectors at your place of work
Managers will be asked to nominate services for visits and individuals who could attend these meetings and focus groups. You will be notified well in advance and support materials will be provided.
The JAR inspection team is multi-disciplinary and normally has inspectors from at least four inspectorates/commissions, including:
- Ofsted
- Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI)
- Health Care Commission (HCC)
- Audit Commission and, where appropriate
- Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI)
The Audit Commission inspector is a member of both the JAR and corporate assessment teams to ensure co-ordination between the enquiries and findings of both teams. Leaders of the review teams are normally inspectors from Ofsted or CSCI, although they may also be drawn from other contributing inspectorates.
We will receive notification of our JAR team later in the year and details will be posted on the web-pages.
JAR inspections:
- Focus on the five outcomes for children and young people
- Evaluate the collective contribution made to the outcomes for children and young people by relevant services in the area
- Make specific judgments about the quality of management and leadership of the council's education and children's social care services and other services, where there is sufficient evidence
- Report on the well-being of all children and young people in the local area, covering universal, preventative and targeted services
- They will pay particular attention to children and young people who are looked after by the council, those with learning difficulties or disabilities and the safeguarding of all children and young people
- Examine how local services gather and respond to the views of users, parents and carers and ensure they involve children and young people
The JAR will examine how our services are improving the lives of children and young people within Darlington. It will examine the leadership and management of these services and the way they work together to support children and young people to:
- Stay safe
- Be healthy
- Enjoy and achieve
- Make a positive contribution
- Achieve economic well-being
These are the five ‘Outcomes for Children’ set out in a national programme being driven by the government called Every Child Matters.
Each outcome will be measured using the same indicators, including: public health data, educational statistics and information about crime, leisure activity and housing.
The JAR inspectors will be sensitive to the local context. They will spend a week analysing all available data before making a series of judgements. They will then spend two weeks on site meeting staff and visiting services in order to test these judgements. They will then grade their findings and publish a report on Ofsted’s website.
Details of how schools will be involved in the Joint Area Review.
Inspectors will be coming to Darlington in March 2008 to review the provision of all publicly funded services for children and young people across Darlington. This will include services provided by the Council, the health service, the voluntary sector, the police... and of course schools.
How will schools be involved?
- Patterns identified from inspections of individual schools will feed into the Joint Area Review report.
- Inspectors conducted an on-line survey for children and young people in a sample of schools across the county to find out their views on the services they receive. This took place in May 2007 as part of the Annual Performance Assessment process.
- There will be a focus on vulnerable children. Inspectors may visit a school to discuss a particular child e.g. one looked after by the local authority or one with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. They will be investigating the way that different organisations work together to support these children. They may ask to see school files for individual children.
- Inspectors will focus on some of the areas for development identified in the last annual performance assessment of the Local Authority and its partners. *These include for example:
Attendance
Exclusion
Attainment across all key stages
Attainment and achievement of LAC
LDD children
* These will be confirmed following the APA assessment in November 2007.
The inspectors will be visiting Darlington for a week during March 2008 (the date will be confirmed nearer the time), when they will be looking at evidence, files for individual children and data. The fieldwork visit will commence 31st March until 11th April 2008. This is when they may visit or ask to interview school staff and/or governors.
Further information
For further details about the JAR, visit the web pages at:
www.darlington.gov.uk/jar or via email: jar@darlington.gov.uk or by ‘phone 01325 388949
About 600 children and young people have completed a questionnaire about life in the Borough. This questionnaire was completed during May 2007 and sent to Ofsted as part of the Annual Perfromance Assessment.
During the two weeks of fieldwork JAR inspectors will meet with children and young people in order to take their views into account when coming to judgements about the quality of services available.
The review team will expect services in the local area to have discussed their provision with children and young people and to be able to show they contribute to improvements in their well-being.
No. JARs will occur until 2009 by which time every local authority area will have been subject to a Joint Area Review.
The services for children and young people will continue to be assessed annually by an Annual Performance Assessment (APA).
Separate judgements about education and social care will continue to be made annually also. As with the JAR, these judgements will focus on the effectiveness of services and their management.
The JAR provides a grade for the Children and Young People’s theme of the Corporate Assessment (CA). The inspections will take place at the same time, with field work taking place between 31st March and 11th April, 2008.
The two processes are closely linked and inform findings. An joint inspector sits on both Inspection Teams.
Further information about the Corporate Assessment can be obtained from Andy Robinson (Policy Manager) Room 106, Town Hall, Darlington, DL1 5QT
Email: andrew.robinson@darlington.gov.uk
Telephone: 01325 38801
The JAR report for Darlington will be published on Ofsted’s website. We will receive a grade between 1 and 4. See below:
- Grade 4: A service that delivers well above the minimum requirements for users
- Grade 3: A service that consistently delivers above minimum requirements for users
- Grade 2: A service that delivers only minimum requirements for users
- Grade 1: A service that does not deliver minimum requirements for users
Yes.
The JAR report will be published by Ofsted and available for download from their website: www.ofsted.gov.uk/
A copy of the JAR report will be available from the Council’s website: ww.darlington.gov.uk/jar
Publication date should be: July/Aug 2008
Over the next few months there will be a variety of briefing sessions, newsletters, emails and bulletins being sent to everyone who provides services to children, young people and their families in Darlington.
This information is important and will help you as the JAR gets nearer.
An initial project team has been established to begin the preparations and logistics for the JAR. This team is lead by Jenni Cooke –Assistant Director [Children & Families] with members drawn from a variety of backgrounds.
The initial core Project Team is:
Jenni Cooke – Assistant Director
Julian Kenshole – Head of Policy & Performance
Mirren Hunter – Policy & Performance Manager
Janet Walke – Policy Development Officer
Lucy Wheatley - Children's Health Partnerships Commissioner
Additional Project Group members are:-
Ian Coxon – Head of Finance
Jan Lefevre – Children’s Social Care Commissioning Manager
Mervyn Bell – Head of Youth Service
Lynn Kilpatrick – Connexions Manager
Karen Grundy – Darlington CVS/First Stop Chief Officer
Lynn Henderson –Early Years
The number of people involved in different aspects of the JAR will expand as time progresses.
If you have any questions please speak to your line-manager. Alternatively please e-mail jar@darlington.gov.uk
Every Child Matters is the Government’s programme of change for children’s services, introduced in the wake of the murder of Victoria Climbie. It aims to improve the life of every child by focusing on five outcomes:
- Being Healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle
- Staying Safe: being protected from harm and neglect
- Enjoying and achieving: getting the most out of life and developing skills for adulthood
- Making a positive contribution: being involved with the community and society and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour
- Achieving Economic well-being: not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full potential
You can find out more about the Every Child Matters agenda using the following link: Every Child Matters.
Darlington produced its first Children and Young Peoples Plan in 2006. This is a three-year plan, which is reviewed every year. The plan tells children, young people their parents and carers what we intend to do for children and young people in Darlington during these three years.
The vision for Children and Young People in Darlington is to: -
“To improve the outcomes and maximise the life chances of all children and young people in Darlington by delivering effective, high quality, integrated services”.
Darlington has three key challenges on which it wants to deliver; the first is the idea of a ‘Champion for Every Child’, which is about parents and carers being responsible for bring up their children and being supported in doing this. The second is to ensure that ‘Every Child goes to School’, if children improve their attendance at school, the difficulties they may face in life are reduced. Finally we have to make sure there is a ‘Job or Place for Every School Leaver’.
Each of these three challenges will flow through all of the work that we do and support our vision.
A full review of the Children and Young Peoples Plan has been carried out.
This review looked back on what we have done for children and young people in Darlington during the year April 2006 to March 2007, considered whither the original priorities were still relevant and looked at how we are progressing with our actions.
Darlington had seven top priorities: -
- Promoting positive sexual health and reducing teenage pregnancy
- Improving the provision of information, advice and guidance for children and young people in Darlington
- Improving the stability of looked after children’s placements
- Reducing absences and exclusion from schools
- Improving academic progress for all children and young people
- Improving opportunities for the 14-19 age group
- Empowering children and young people to have a greater voice and influence over local decision making.
As a result of the review 2 further top-level priorities have been identified: -
- Focusing on ‘Narrowing the Gap’ in achievement between the 30% most deprived communities and the rest
- Improving outcomes for vulnerable groups of children and young people, particularly addressing cross cutting issues e.g. bullying
Darlington has identified its priorities in each one of the 5 outcomes of the Every Child Matters themes. Examples of these are: -
Being Healthy:
- Promote positive sexual health and reduce teenage pregnancy
- Promote physical activity and healthy eating to halt and reduce obesity
- Reduce the number of young people who smoke
Staying Safe:
- Improve our approach to accident prevention
- Reduce crime and the harm caused by illegal drugs
- Improve the stability of placements of our looked after children
Enjoying and Achieving:
- Improve school attendance
- Enhance the progress made by children and young people during their time in education
- Implement a borough-wide programme of Extended Schools and Cluster Initiatives providing a range of comprehensive services
Making a Positive Contribution:
- Empower children and young people to have a greater voice and influence over local decision-making and the delivery of services
- Develop a ‘Sports and Leisure’ annual offer
- Develop positive relationships and choose not to bully or discriminate
Achieve Economic Well-being:
- Enhance education and training opportunities for young people aged
- 14-19
- Increase the number of young people progressing to Higher Education by raising aspirations
- Reduce the number of children living in low-income households
The review of the Children’s and Young Peoples Plan looked in detail at the progress we have made so far on our stated priorities and what future actions we will take to achieve them.
A full copy of the Children and Young Peoples Plan and the first year review are available on the Council web site.
If you require further information contact:
Children’s Services
Darlington Borough Council
Town Hall
Darlington
DL1 5QT
Tel: 01325 388949