Every child matters / presented to Parliament by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Command of Her Majesty, September 2003.

  • HM Treasury
Date:
2003
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Every child matters / presented to Parliament by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Command of Her Majesty, September 2003. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    National Service Framework hospital standard, following the recommendations of Lord Laming. Child protection is included in the National Policing Plan. This plan is currently under review and the new plan will be published in November 2003. 5.34 The Government has already introduced a new duty under the Education Act 2002 on local education authorities, schools and further education institutions to underpin and reinforce the priority given to safeguarding and protecting children. Under the Act, LEAs and the governing bodies of schools and FE institutions will be required to make arrangements to carry out their functions with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, and to have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State in drawing up those arrangements. The new duty will come into force on 1 April 2004. DfES will issue new guidance to assist with implementation. 5.35 In addition, we intend, subject to consultation, to place a duty on all relevant local bodies (e.g. such as the police and health organisations) in exercising their normal functions, to have regard to safeguarding children, promoting their well-being and working together through the local partnership arrangements. Inspection 5.36 The Government is committed to ensuring inspection captures how well services work together to improve children’s lives within a framework that is consistent with the recommendations of the recent Office for Public Services Reform review. To do this, we intend to create an integrated inspection framework across children’s services. Ofsted will take-the lead in developing a framework for integrated inspections in consultation with Commission for Social Care Inspection and Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection (CHAI). Where appropriate, they will bring together joint teams to carry out area-based inspections of education, social services, Connexions, youth services and child health services and drawing on the work of other inspectorates such as Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation. 5.37 The inspection framework would cover the quality of provision, training of staff, outcomes achieved, management capacity, accountability arrangements and the value for money of services overall. Services would be assessed on how well they worked together to meet overall objectives for children, as well as on how well they met their own objectives. 5.38 Inspections would lead to a published report which would assess and give a rating for the quality of provision overall, as well as service by service, and also the quality of joint working such as information sharing and multi-disciplinary teams. The report would be sent to those responsible for all the services involved in the area, and (in respect of local authority services) feed into the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA). The Government will discuss with the Audit Commission and others how best to