Examination of Witnesses (Questions 77
- 79)
MONDAY 13 DECEMBER 2004
MR DAVID
BELL, MRS
ANNA WALKER
CB, MR STEVE
BUNDRED AND
MR DAVID
BEHAN
Q77 Chairman: Can I welcome our Inspectors
to our deliberations? David Bell, of course, is Her Majesty's
Inspector, Ofsted; Anna Walker, who is the Chief Executive of
the Healthcare Commission; Steve Bundred, who is Chief Executive
of the Audit Commission; and David Behan, who is Chief Inspector
of the Commission for Social Care Inspection. We were trying to
work out a collective description of so many Inspectors, and Jonathan
came up with a "Gotcha" of Inspectors, which I thought
was quite inventive! We are here today to share some concerns
and questions with you about how the whole new system is going
to work. It is new territory for us and I have already said that
even venturing into new worlds of acronyms is quite difficult;
but that is all right, we will learn. Certainly Steve Bundred
and I have met before, David is a regular, but Anna and David
welcome particularly—we will be seeing you on a regular
basis, I take it? This is as challenging to us as to you in the
sense that this is a very large added responsibility for the Committee
and in these hearings we want to make sure that we do it right.
So we start by asking you if you want two or three minutes each
to say how you think the new system is going to work and any concerns
that you have; but I will hold you to two or three minutes. Could
we start from left to right, with Anna Walker?
Mrs Walker: Thank you very much
indeed. As you say, I am the Chief Executive of the Healthcare
Commission. The first point I would like to make is that as a
Commission we buy extremely strongly into the vision that Every
Child Matters, so that our work on children starts from that
basis. We do also have a statutory duty to be concerned about
child protection, child healthcare and child issues generally;
so our work springs from that statutory basis as well. We are
very committed to working with David Bell and Ofsted, to ensure
that the Joint Area Review, the joint inspection activity works
effectively. We are a young organisation, which means that we
are building up our own methods of inspection and proceeding,
but what we are clear on is that we are very willing indeed to
be flexible with the way that we come at this activity in order
to operate under Ofsted's lead and to help the joint inspection
activity to be effective. One other very important point I ought
to make is that our work on children is not just the joint work,
we also have various ongoing healthcare responsibilities, inspection
responsibilities, for example looking at the treatment of children
under the Department of Health standards, feeding that activity
into the annual rating system; where there are complaints or concerns
of a significant sort in relation to children, following those
up, as we did, for example, in relation to an investigation into
a hospital in Wolverhampton, for maternity services. That stream
of work is important; it will continue because it needs to do
so under our current system. The fruit of it we can and will take
into the work with Ofsted to ensure that we bring all our knowledge
on health and healthcare of children to bear on that joint review
activity.
Q78 Chairman: Thank you. Steve Bundred.
How is your organisation going to deal with this?
Mr Bundred: As with the Healthcare
Commission, we too buy into the vision of Every Child Matters.
We think these are very important services and it is absolutely
essential that the quality of them be improved and that the regulation
of them be improved too. As a Commission we are absolutely committed
to what we have described as "strategic regulation".
By strategic regulation we mean a number of things, but among
them we aim to maximise the impact we have on the improvement
of public services whilst, at the same time, minimising the burden
that we impose through our activities on the providers of those
services. We aim to do that in part by working more effectively
and more seamlessly with other regulators and other bodies with
a similar objective. So in devising the range of arrangements
that will accompany the introduction of the changes foreshadowed
in Every Child Matters, we have been particularly concerned
to ensure that Joint Area Reviews fit seamlessly with the Commission's
Comprehensive Performance Assessment of local authorities, where
there are overlapping interests. It has not been easy to get to
that point because the issues involved in both are very complex.
But I am very pleased that, through the cooperation we have had
from Ofsted and from other Inspectorates over recent weeks, we
have now been able, jointly, to publish proposals for Joint Area
Reviews and for Comprehensive Performance Assessment of local
authorities from 2005, which we believe will be broadly welcomed
by local government and by other providers of children's services
as meeting the objective we have set of ensuring that there is
a seamless split between the two and absolute minimum burden on
the providers of public services.
Q79 Chairman: Thank you for that.
David Bell.
Mr Bell: Mr Chairman, 4 August
is a date that sticks in my mind: one, because it is my wedding
anniversary and, two, because on 4 August 2003 we were given this
collective commission to bring about a process for the inspection
of children's services. It was something which we all wanted to
do—and I am sure that you will not be able to put the proverbial
cigarette paper between us on that front this afternoon—but
we recognised the complexity of the task. I am pleased to say
that we have got to the point at which we are now, just embarked
on consultation, ready to roll from next year, largely due to
the tremendous goodwill and enthusiasm shown by all Inspectorates
across all the bodies involved. So I think that has been a tremendous
plus. As Steve said, we have been anxious throughout to ensure
that we devise a system that is proportionate, and therefore it
is important to us to ensure that we make as much use of the existing
evidence that we all generate individually. At the same time,
we have all recognised that we cannot just keep on inspecting
all that we have previously inspected. So I think all of us will
be able to tell a story of different aspects of our work that
have either had to change or, in some cases, disappear, so that
we can do a proportionate job through Joint Area Review and, more
generally, under Children's Services Inspection. In a sense that
leads you to focus on what matters, and it may be that part of
the questioning this afternoon will focus precisely on what matters,
but we are certainly of the opinion that if we can look at some
of those connection points between services we will be adding
something worthwhile, because if you look at the history of "disaster",
if I can put it that way, in relation to children's services it
is often because of gaps between the services—that the services
do not join up or connect. Therefore, looking at those connections
for us is a very important part of this process. I mentioned that
we have just embarked on consultation, we are consulting on the
Framework for the Inspection of Children's Services; we are consulting
on the annual performance assessment of local councils, children's
social service and education; and we are consulting on some of
the materials that Inspectors will be using on site. So I think
we come before you this afternoon confident of what we have achieved
so far and ready to move to the next stage of implementation.
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