Quality Assurance Framework

Transcription

1 Quality Assurance Framework INTRODUCTION Safeguarding children is one of the most complex tasks carried out in the public sector. It can only be achieved effectively when the system designed to keep children safe works well and that system is necessarily complex and multi-faceted. At the heart of an effective safeguarding system must be an effective and comprehensive quality assurance process and whilst it need not be complicated, it does need to reflect the complexity of the task. This Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) starts from a number of key principles: That safeguarding is never perfect and constant scrutiny is required to ensure there is continuous improvement evident across the system That the most effective quality assurance comes from the nature and detail of the organisational and partnership culture and leadership The QAF needs to offer reassurance that all parts of the system are working effectively both individually and collectively to safeguard children. Measures of outcomes for children are clearly the most important ones to assess but measuring the effectiveness of the system also requires a focus on both inputs and outputs as well as outcomes. The QAF has to provide learning back into the system its core purpose is to improve service provision not simply describe or criticise it The quality assurance system set out here describes: What do we need to know Why is it important How will we find out Final version QAF Page 1

2 What will we do with the knowledge closing the learning loop Most agencies within the Devon Children and Family Partnership will have their own quality assurance framework or equivalent. The purpose of this document is to set out how the Partnership will assure itself that the system is working well and ensuring, above all else, that children and young people are being kept safe within it. In order to seek that reassurance, we will focus on the following five key areas. They are presented separately for ease of reference but in reality the success of the QAF will depend on our ability to explore them together and to understand the dynamic inter-play between them. The five areas are: 1. Culture and leadership 2. The contribution of individual agencies to the safeguarding system 3. The strength and effectiveness of the partnership on the front line 4. Outcomes for Children including prevention of the escalation of risk and harm 5. Identification of future and unseen risk 1. Culture and Leadership What do we need to know and Why? 1.1 The single most important factor in the delivery of good safeguarding work is the organisational and partnership culture within which it takes place and that is a consequence of the leadership of individual organisations and of the partnership. Effective safeguarding takes place when cultures are open and transparent, where informed senior leaders are close to and sighted on front-line issues, where those senior leaders are accessible and visible and where risk is owned throughout the organisation. 1.2 The Devon Children and Family Partnership has set out an escalation culture (Appendix One). This culture needs to be one that welcomes escalation of differences as being in children s best interests, that supports and expects practitioners to advocate strongly for what they see as right for children and where differences of opinion can be expressed maturely and resolution reached to support children. Courageous conversations will be welcomed and expected both at practitioner and senior manager levels an absence of escalation will be a cause for concern. 1.3 The other core measure of culture and leadership will be the approach of agencies to this and other partnerships. Partnerships only work when those involve see them as places where they do their core business. Partnerships will not work if those involved adopt a passive or reactive approach to them. Bringing their core business to partnership tables, seeking partnership engagement and joint solutions and being Final version QAF Page 2

3 ready to challenge each other as necessary are key components in a healthy partnership culture. 1.4 The escalation culture describes the benefits of seeking a joint approach characterised by a confident humility finding that right balance between selfconfidence and expertise on the one hand and an appreciation that there is always new learning and others may know more or better on the other. How will we Find Out? 1.5 By definition, assessing culture is a hard thing to do some of it comes from a judging how it feels around here. That said there are areas of exploration that can help to understand what the culture is and primarily this will come from front-line staff: Walkabouts - Front line staff will be routinely asked to comment on those issues set out in 1.1 above Staff Surveys Feedback via training and Case Conversations with frontline practitioners The Locality Structures offer a particularly useful vehicle to judge culture as its where operational staff will come together to look at local needs and responses. How that work is carried out, the extent of effective partnership work locally, the ability and willingness of all to remain focused on the best interests of children, the ability and willingness to have those courageous conversations will all get enacted in these structures. Audit activity in respect of key practice themes 1.6 Voice and experience of users. As always, those who use the services will have the most accurate sense of what they felt like whether they felt they were treated with respect, their views were listened to and engaged with, staff delivered on their commitments, difficult issues were raised with honesty and integrity will all be areas that we will ask the Experts by Experience Group to comment upon and test out. This group will need to capture the views and experiences not just of children and young people but of adults and parents/carers too. Organisations in the voluntary sector and others such as Healthwatch will be engaged to ensure their expertise and closeness to users is effectively captured. 2. Individual Agency Contribution What Do We Need to Know and Why 2.1 It is important that we are reassured that each partner agency is making the required contribution to the safeguarding system. Our approach will triangulate a number of interrelated areas which, when taken together, will offer a more rounded and accurate picture about agency contributions. Whilst safeguarding is everyone s business, we acknowledge that some agencies contribution to safeguarding is in fact much more central that others and that the assessment of those contributions will Final version QAF Page 3

4 reflect that the assessment will be proportionate and appropriate to the required contribution. How Will We Find Out? 2.2 The key areas to triangulate will be: Self audit Internal performance management arrangement Feedback from other sources Individual agency contribution Participation/en gagement at multi-agency level Walkabouts Staff development An assessment of the internal performance management arrangements in relation to safeguarding activities within each agency and that there is a culture of challenge and scrutiny evident in the process. It will include an examination of the databases used and any case file audit activity where appropriate. We will gather in a raft of information already captured about individual agency activity - for example, numbers of contacts to the MASH made, their conversion to referrals, involvement in the S47 process (where appropriate), attendance and contribution at child protection conferences and core groups, referrals to the LADO all. In addition, we will look at Partnership meetings invited and attended, training courses committed to and attended, sub- group membership and contribution, evidence of contribution to multi-agency case audit and SCR recommendation implementation. Any completed Walkabouts (see Appendix Two) in their area these Walkabouts will include a look at their performance management arrangements as set out above A short, focused and agency specific self-audit form. The form will set out what good safeguarding activity would look like in that specific agency agencies will be asked to measure themselves against a standard relevant to their contribution rather than complete a universal audit form. A judgement about the development of individual staff in that agency. That will be measured by looking at recruitment and retention data, use of agency staff, in-house training offered and taken-up, quality and quantity of supervision available to staff Final version QAF Page 4

5 Until such time as the legislation is changed, the arrangements set out above will constitute our Section 11 Audit framework. 3. The Strength and Effectiveness of Operational Partnership Working What Do We Need to Know and Why? 3.1 The majority of child protection and safeguarding work is done in partnership whether through Section 47 meetings, Case Conferences, Core Groups, Children in Need Meetings, MACSEs or Professionals meetings. How Will We Find Out? 3.2 We will measure the work of the partnership both through quantitative and qualitative information. Quantitative information - Performance data/kpi Serious case reviews/ other case reviews The Strength and Effectiveness of the Partnership Audits - single agency/multi agency Frontline intelligence Feedback from Meeting Chairs and Front Line Managers 3.3 Quantitative Measures. A large part of the agreed partnership database will focus on measures that give at least some proxy indication about the strength and effectiveness of partnership working. The QA group will expect individual agencies to focus on their own performance issues as revealed by the data our job is to analyse it to offer commentary on how the safeguarding system is working. 3.4 Spot Audits. These are case audits designed to help understand in more detail any anomalies or odd trends in the data. These are not comprehensive multi-agency audits there are focused examinations of certain key moments in a case that might be being highlighted by the data. 3.5 Child Protection Conferences. Child protection conferences sit at the heart of much of the child protection work carried out in the system. They are independently chaired and Final version QAF Page 5

6 they offer a window into core issues such as risk management, inter-agency functioning, the nature and quality of work with children at risk and the extent to which families, including extended families are engaged in the process. 3.6 In particular, we will ask conference chairs to provide a quarterly summary that covers: A summary of their QA questionnaires completed after each conference An overview of the risks faced by children in the county An overview of the quality of direct work with children and young people and the extent to which it has helped them respond to the risks they are facing and to build resilience and fortitude An overview of the work with parents, carers and extended family members and the extent to which it is building on strengths and assets and can be judged to be reducing risk to children An overview of all matters escalated by meeting chairs to any of the partner agencies 4. Outcomes for Children Voice and experience of users outcomes for children Audits - single agency/multiagency (including SCRs) 4.1 Audits. The Partnership will agree a cycle of auditing. The selection of themes for audit will be guided by the knowledge arising from Serious Case Reviews, quantitative data that identifies possible practice issues and feedback from children, young people and parents. A variety of different methodologies will be employed. All audits undertaken will seek the views and experience of children and their families where possible/appropriate. In addition to planned or ad hoc audits, certain cases will be reviewed during the year either through the SCR process, a Local Learning Review, a SIRI or other single agency reviewing processes. Our default position will be that such reviews are always looked at from a multi-agency position in the first instance and only sit with single agencies where there is an agreement that that is the most suitable way forward. All reviews, however conducted will be made available to the wider partnership Final version QAF Page 6

7 Appendix Three sets out the different audit and review processes available to the Partnership. 4.2 The Voice and Experience of Users is the most important way we can measure how effective our outcomes are and especially assessing the extent to which children feel safer and families feel better able to care for their children. The Experts by Experience will be the key group in helping us understand outcomes for children. We will need to develop a broader and more coordinated range of engagement than is currently in place and that seeks the views of parents and carers as well as children and young people. 4.3 There is a key role here for the Voluntary and Community Sector. They are often much closer to the experience of service users and some exist to advocate on their behalf the Experts by Experience will rely greatly on their input to help drive this aspect of the QAF. Lay members Audits Expert by Experience group Partnership participatio n work Voice and experience of users Advocacy feedback Voluntary / Community Sector Stand up Speak up/child in care council IRO feedback 5. The Identification of Future and Unseen Risk 5.1 Thus far, this document has set out how we will quality assure the system designed to protect and safeguard children and young people. It has necessarily focussed on work and service provision that is currently in place. 5.2 However, any effective QAF must also ensure that we are alert to risks that might not yet be evident in the County and to groups of children who can go unseen without proactive scrutiny of their circumstances. We need to evidence a relentless intellectual curiosity that means we will want to be constantly exploring the circumstances of groups of children and young people and not solely relying on evidence of concern to present itself a proactive approach is clearly more effective than reacting to revealed weaknesses. 5.3 In order to cover this, the QAF will include: Regular examination of SCRs emerging in other authorities Regular alerts about new and relevant national research Final version QAF Page 7

8 Oversight of those bodies, locally and nationally, whose role is to advocate on behalf of children or certain groups of children (e.g. Office of the Children s Commissioner, Who Cares Trust, Family Rights Group). Routinely scrutinising all data specifically to examine differential outcomes for groups of children including looking at gender and ethnicity and for children with disabilities. Closing the Learning Loop The section on QAF Delivery sets out how the findings from this framework will be fed back into the system. Embedding good practice, what works well and learning from when things go wrong is an important part of supporting a culture of continuous learning and improvement. We will build feedback and learning direct to practitioners through a series of different methodologies. Partnership multi-agency training programme and annual conference Case conversations Best Practice Masterclasses Safeguarding training magazine Communication via Partnership Newsletter/ News flashes Communication via Partnership Website/Partnership Twitter Publication of Serious Case Reviews and other reviews Dissemination through sub group and locality group structure Partnership Annual Report Single agency training Single agency briefings Supervision Mentoring/shadowing QAF Delivery Quality Assurance, just like safeguarding, is everyone's business. Practitioners and managers all have a responsibility to ensure their work and that of their agency is as safe and as good as it can be. Within the Devon Children and Family Partnership, the lead and coordinating responsibility sits with the Quality Assurance group. This is a small, senior group made up of representatives from police, health and children social work and is chaired by the Independent Chair. The Independent Chair also sits on and co-chairs the Partnership Executive Group. This will ensure a direct route for the lessons from the QA work to be fed directly back to the partnership and to individual agencies. It means service development and investment can be directly informed by evidence about what is and is not working or through the identification of service gaps Final version QAF Page 8

9 Underneath the Quality Assurance group is the QA Delivery Group and the SCR subgroup. The QA Delivery group will take a lead on the operational delivery of much of this framework especially the delivery of the various audits and the links with the Experts by Experience group and locality alliance groups Final version QAF Page 9