Annual Report focus on local authorities
Local authorities have a lead role from providing universal services such as education through to specialist services for children and young people whose circumstances make them potentially vulnerable, for example those for looked after children. They work with a range of public agencies including the health service and the police to improve life chances for children and young people.
Children in the best performing council areas generally get off to a good start in early years settings and most continue to do well throughout their education, achieve well post-16 and are 
successfully engaged in education, training or employment at age 17 and beyond. An additional characteristic of these councils is the high level of good or better provision for children and young people whose circumstances may make them particularly vulnerable, including those who are looked after.
Children’s services
Key findings in Ofsted’s Annual Report 2008/9 show that the large majority of councils and their partners provide good-quality children’s services, often in challenging circumstances. However, even in some of the councils judged to be performing well overall there are pockets of underperformance.
A small but increased minority of nine councils’ children’s services are performing poorly overall, largely because they are making an inadequate contribution to ensuring that children and young people are as safe as possible.
Annual rating
In 2009, Ofsted introduced a new annual rating of local authority children’s services, which replaced the Annual Performance Assessment. The rating is derived from a performance profile of the quality of services and outcomes for children and young people in each local authority area. The profile draws more heavily on the findings of Ofsted’s inspection and regulation of services, settings and institutions for which the local authority has responsibilities, either alone or in partnership with others. These include inspections of childcare, maintained schools, children’s social care and provision within the learning and skills sector.
The rating also contributes significantly to the organisational assessment score for each local authority as part of the arrangement for the Comprehensive Area Assessment.
Particular emphasis will also be given to evidence from new inspections of safeguarding and looked after children’s services as well as the annual, unannounced inspections of key child protection arrangements in each council which were introduced in June 2009.
The children’s services performance ratings for 2009 show that over two thirds of councils are performing at the highest two levels overall, with 10 being outstanding. However, nine councils were judged to be performing poorly overall.
Children in the best performing council areas generally get off to a good start in early years settings and most continue to do well throughout their education, achieve well post-16 and are successfully engaged in education, training or employment at the age of 17 and beyond. Inspection evidence shows that in the best councils there are many examples of strong quality assurance and performance management in children’s social care, of engaging effectively with children and families, of successful strategies to maintain placement stability, and of creative and innovative ways of involving children and young people in decision-making about their lives.
An additional characteristic of these councils is the high level of good or better provision for children and young people whose circumstances may make them particularly vulnerable, including those who are looked after. The most effective local authorities, for example, have rigorous systems for monitoring the progress of looked after children closely, ensuring personal support is available when required and holding schools to account for their outcomes.
Of the 40 unannounced inspections of contact, referral and assessment services in individual councils completed by 5 November 2009, at least one area for priority action was identified in half of them. These included the need to tackle delays in the timeliness of assessments; the quality of supervision and managerial oversight; the quality of assessment, including risk assessment; and the promptness of response to referrals. In seven councils, the unannounced inspections have identified priority actions of sufficient concern to limit their annual children’s services performance rating to ‘performs adequately’.
Serious case reviews
Ofsted has had responsibility for inspecting children’s social care from April 2007 and this includes evaluating serious case reviews. The number of serious case reviews evaluated by Ofsted has increased greatly this year. The high proportion of inadequate serious case reviews is still a cause for concern. There is, however, a general picture of improvement in overall quality.
Ofsted has liaised with relevant inspectorates and the Department for Children, Schools and Families to respond to the recommendations made in the report by Lord Laming and revise its framework for evaluating serious case reviews.
Youth services
Ofsted completed its four-year inspection programme of local authority youth work at the end of 2008. Each of the 11 local authorities inspected this year is introducing new integrated youth support arrangements, where previously separate services are expected to work more closely together to respond more effectively to the needs of young people. Of the youth services inspected, five are good and six are adequate. In many cases, youth work makes a valuable contribution to young people’s development.
During 2008/09 there have been a number of significant changes in how the quality of performance in children’s services is assessed and reported. In 2008, Ofsted completed its final year of annual performance assessments of local authority services for children and young people. These assessments looked at the contribution that council services made towards fulfilling the five Every Child Matters outcomes for children and young people as well their overall effectiveness and capacity to improve.
More details are in The Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills 2008/09, which can be found on the Ofsted website at www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Annual-Report-2008-09
The Local authorities summary can be found on the Ofsted website at: www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Annual-Report-2008-09/Local-authorities-summary
The Main summary of the Annual Report 2008/09 can be found on the Ofsted website at: www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Annual-Report-2008-09/Main-summary
