Show Notes
A recording of the live panel discussion that took place at Ofsted's Annual Report launch on Tuesday 7 December 2021. The panel discussion the issues facing education, children's services and skill over the last year, and look forward to the future. Transcript AT – Anna Trethewey CJ- Chris Jones AS – Amanda Spielman JC – Jenny Coles HB – Hardip Begol YS – Yvette Stanley CR – Chris Russell AT- Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. On Tuesday, the seventh of December, we launched our Annual Report on Education, Children's Services and Skills. Following the publication of the report, we had a panel discussion in front of a live audience to discuss some of the issues over the last year. Obviously, as this was recorded at the beginning of December, the discussion reflects COVID as it was then we've moved on quite a bit since before Christmas, but I hope you enjoyed the discussion or the same. So listen away. CJ - Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the launch of this year's Ofsted Annual Report. My name is Chris Jones. I'm Ofsted’s Director of Strategy. We've assembled this distinguished panel of guests that you can see at the front and I've just introduce them before we hear from them. Firstly, Jenny Coles, who was until recently was the Director of Children's and Services in Hertfordshire, is a former president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services and is currently Chair of the What Works Centre for Social Care. Thank you for being with us, Jenny. Next to her is Hardip Begol, who is the Chief Executive of Woodard Academies Trust is also a non-Executive Director at the Centre for Education and Youth and a former senior civil servant in the Department of Education. Welcome Hardip. And from Ofsted, we have Yvette Stanley who is our National Director for Social Care and Early Years Regulation. And Chris Russell, who is our National Director for Education. Before I asked them for their reflections on the past year, I'm going to ask Her Majesty's Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman, just to give us some opening remarks. So over to you, Amanda. AS - Thank you very much, Chris, and welcome, everybody. As Chris said, I'm not going to do a full on speech, you've had a chance to look at the report and read the commentary. We wanted to bring together this group of interested and interesting people, including all of you to talk about the report and the issues it raises. So just to be very brief to begin with, it has been an extraordinarily difficult year, in many ways, and for many different groups of people. But I do think that we've asked an extraordinary amount from the youngest people in our society. For much of last year, they had usually experiences of childhood put on hold in order to protect in the main, the older members of society. That most obviously affected their education, but also their care, their social experiences, and the development and growth that we often take for granted as part of growing up. And here I know that everybody will have read, thought been, talking over the week over the weekend and this week about the very unfortunate young boy in Solihull who won't be growing up. It's a tragic reminder of how difficult the job of child protection is. We're now all trying to make sense of the impact of COVID. At a time when that impact is still very much being felt this tremendous work being done across education and social care, as there has been throughout the pandemic. So we do all owe a debt of gratitude to the teachers the social workers, the childcare workers, the lecturers, everybody else in education and care who really have put in the hard yards over the last 18 months. As this report does make clear, we do owe this cohort of children and learners something else. We do owe them the best possible chance to fulfil that potential. And to do that, we really do need to understand the year that's gone and work out what needs to be done to make up for lost time. And I think that's all I'm goin
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On this podcast, we have Helen Davis, who's Head of National and Joint Inspection from HMI Probation, Lucy Hart, the Deputy Director and Multi-Agency Operations from CQC, Simon Alexander, the Associate Inspector from HMICFRS and Paul DInverno, Ofsted's HMI Specialist Advisor. We’re also joined by Sarah Jones and Tanya Fulcher from Norfolk County Council. Cait Mellow I'd like to welcome everybody to another episode of Ofsted Talks and this time we are talking about the JTAI, the Joint Targeted Area Inspection. This is a complex inspection where different agencies such as the Care Quality Commission, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation, Ofsted, and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue all arrive in a local area at the same time and work together to inspect lots of different services that are supporting children. The Joint Targeted Area Inspections, JTAIs as we call them, we’ve been holding these for ten years. So do we all do all inspections that are done under this banner or is it sometimes us and CQC or HMICFRS. How does it work? Paul, do you want to talk us through that? Paul DInverno Yeah, so we've been undertaking joint target area inspections now for 10 years, so it's a good chance for reflection. In terms of, we do two types now. We do thematic inspections, which is Ofsted, of both children’s social care and education and HMI Probation, the Care Quality Commission and HMICFRS. So we all join together for the thematic inspections and they give a very unique insight into multi-agency working.And we also do an inspection of initial need and risk, sometimes known as the ‘front door’. And that's just CQC, HMICFRS and Ofsted to undertake those inspections. Cait Mellow So when you say the front door, what does that mean? Paul DInverno Well, we're looking at the initial response when need or risk is first identified for children. And we look at that through the window of individual agencies response. So some aspects of health, the police response and also children's Social Care and what is often referred to as the MASH multi-agency safeguarding hub where that exists and it's about the assessment of risk and need, the appropriate decision making and ultimately whether children and families get the right help at the right time. Cait Mellow Okay, so Simon, what do you think? Why do they work well? What are they adding in terms of value?
We want to make sure that Ofsted plays its part in ensuring children and young people in our social care system are happy, safe and able to reach their full potential. Take part by giving us your views: Improving the way Ofsted inspects children’s social care - GOV.UK Transcript: Tracey Metcalfe My name is Tracey Metcalfe and I'm the Assistant Regional Director for Social Care and Regulation in the North East Yorkshire and Humber. We're consulting on reforms to our two main social care inspection frameworks, the Inspection of Local Authority Children's Services or ILACS for short, and the Social Care Inspection Framework, or SCIFF for short. So I'm here today with my colleagues, Dominic Stevens and Matthew Brazier. I'm going to ask colleagues to introduce themselves. Dominic. Dominic Stevens Hi. So I'm Dominic Stevens. I'm the programme lead for the ILACS Inspection Framework. Matthew Brazier Thanks, Tracy. Yeah, I'm Matthew Brazier and I do a similar job as Dominic, but I'm the programme director for the social care common inspection framework, which I'll explain a little bit more in a minute about what that means. Tracey Metcalfe Thanks so much, Matthew. Thanks both for joining me today. So we're consulting on reforms to our two main social care inspection frameworks. So could you both just briefly explain what these two inspection programmes are for and how they work for children? So I'm going to come to you first, Dominic. Dominic Stevens Thanks. So the ILACS framework, and as you've said, stands for Inspecting Local Authority Children's Services, is the framework we use when Ofsted acts as the inspectorate for all local authority children's services around the country. And we'll say a little bit more in a minute about what that means and how it might develop a little bit in the future. Matthew Brazier Social care common inspection framework, which is a bit of a mouthful, but that's a framework that looks at mainly regulated services. So things like children's homes, fostering services, residential family centres. And I think I probably should say a little bit about what regulated means. In other words, services that must meet certain standards of quality and safety that the organisations that provide these services have to register with Ofsted and follow certain guidelines and procedures. Tracey Metcalfe That's really helpful. And I wonder, Matthew, could we explore what's changing and why we're consultants? So, for example, can you tell me a little bit more about the vision for our revised frameworks in the SCIF, for example? Matthew Brazier We want our inspections to continue to act as a force for good. We want them to encourage the highest quality of practice and provision to ensure the best outcomes for children and their families. We've been working a lot with the government. We're ensuring that our frameworks reflect the reform agenda and to make sure that they align with changes to statutory guidance. We want to strengthen the way that ILACS and SCIFF talks to each other, to encourage providers and commissioners to work together, for example, to secure the right homes for children in the right places and ensure they meet the needs of all children, including especially those with complex lives. And to do this, we'll make the best use of our insights promptly and effectively, and we really need to reflect the shared responsibilities that local authorities and providers have for, after all, are the same children. And enduring relationships with the heart of inspection. And finally, and most importantly, we want to make sure we do all we can to hear the voices of children and their families, to help them participate in inspections. We really want to improve the way we feedback our findings to children and families. We've made some specific proposals in this consultation, but we also have set out an ambition for both the frameworks, what we want our inspections to do. One is that we want to make sure that t
Did you know Ofsted inspects out of school care for children under the age of 8? This can include activity-based clubs, wraparound care and holiday activities. Find out more about how we inspect in this podcast with guests Craig Jones from the School-Aged Childcare Association and Dan Super from Super Team Sports. Cait Mellow: Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. This time we're talking about school-age childcare. Did you know we inspect and regulate out-of-school care? I'm here with Wendy Ratcliff, HMI, the Principal Officer for Early Education at Ofsted. Caroline Hearn, the Specialist Advisor for Early Years at Ofsted. Craig Jones from School Age Child Care Association and Dan Super from Super Team Sports. What type of setting does this cover? After school, holiday clubs, wraparound sports? Caroline, talk us through that.
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