Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
MONDAY 13 DECEMBER 2004
MR DAVID
BELL, MRS
ANNA WALKER
CB, MR STEVE
BUNDRED AND
MR DAVID
BEHAN
Q120 Helen Jones: I wanted to go
back to something Mrs Walker said actually, because it worried
me a little. When you were commenting on the "stay healthy"
outcome, you talked all the time in terms of services for people
who were ill. You talked about care for people. It seems to me
that is not what it is about. I want to ask you whether we actually
have the systems in place to look at health across the board,
because this is not simply about treating children who are sick;
it is about making sure they grow up healthy, and that means we
have to look at how we look at the patterns that are set for children
in pre-school, we have to look, as Steve Bundred rightly said,
at open spaces and recreation. We also have to look—and
it is a particular bee in my bonnet, I must confess—at the
meals that are served up in schools. None of that was mentioned.
How are we going to make sure that those types of things are catered
for in the inspection framework? Schools will tell you, "It
is nothing to do with us. It is not our problem. We have all these
vending machines and they are making a lot of money for us. The
meals—well, what can you do?" They shrug their shoulders
at you a lot of the time. How is that sort of thing being taken
into account? I use it as an example, because after telling us
you were developing this joint inspection framework, what I then
heard from you was about how things had always been done in health,
and not the links between health, education, recreation and so
on.
Mrs Walker: If I can come back
on that, I am sorry if I was misleading. There was a particular
point I wanted to make, which I will come on to at the end. The
remit of the Healthcare Commission, which is a new statutory remit
as we are a new body, actually includes both health care and health,
which is actually extremely helpful from our perspective, because
it allows it to be a driver of our work and absolutely ensure
that we are not just looking at the traditional role of the health
care organisation, but how they are working with others to bring
about the broader health outcomes that we are after. That is our
statutory remit, and over and above that, the standards that we
inspect against, which are the Government's Department of Health
standards, to get on to the so-called developmental standards
are all about health care organisations working with others for
the health of the population as a whole. So I actually feel that
the framework and the drivers that we have in our system will
ensure that we, as inspectors and the health care organisations,
look at the wider remit. The point I was trying to make—and
I am sorry if I was not clear about this—is that the national
service framework actually highlights that there are within the
health care system some gaps that we need to close, and we need
to do that for children as well as ensure that the partnership
joined-up working is going on for the broader health reasons.
Q121 Helen Jones: I understand that
but I want to come back to my point. You talked about health care
organisations co-operating with others. What I want to know is
how, in a joint inspection framework, you look at health across
the piece. It is not just about health care organisations co-operating;
it is about what schools do, it is about what councils do.
Mr Bundred: Could I just add on
the local authority side that the shared objective, the shared
priority between local and central government which relates to
building healthier and safer communities is one of the themes
within the corporate assessment that will be undertaken for the
CPA, for our comprehensive performance assessment, and so within
that we will be looking at things like the progress that the local
authority is making to achieving the decent home standard, for
example. So that whole public health agenda of the contribution
that the local authority is making, both through the delivery
of its own services and through its leadership role in local partnerships,
will be a feature of CPA.
Mr Bell: Can I just make one cautionary
comment, and that is we cannot and nor should we attempt to inspect
everything. You might think that is a strange thing to come from
inspectorates and inspectors, but I think it is an important principle
that we should not attempt to do everything that we could possibly
inspect. One of the key tasks for us in judging where to put our
inspection time and activity is to get to the right places, and
I think one should not underestimate the general climate either.
I think health is a very good example. People are talking about
the health of school children, they are talking about physical
activity and exercise, and they are talking about diet. They are
talking about a lot of those things perhaps in a way that even
three or four years ago people were not talking. I think we should
see that as a positive sign, that we have people thinking, talking,
doing things about health. What we cannot guarantee to do however
is come behind every aspect of that and inspect it. So we have
to be careful that we do not over-expect what inspection can do,
even in a joint arrangement such as this.
Q122 Chairman: That leads us to some
very interesting questions because, in a sense, on the one hand,
the public could quite fear that your inspectorate would really
in theory inspect almost everything. To give you an example of
that, some of the questioning is directed, of course, to Anna
because it is the health sector that has less of a history of
working across the piece in cooperation. All of us, as constituency
MPs, know the difficulty of that relationship with people like
individual, single-handed GPs, health visitors and so on. The
health system has its great strengths and also its great weaknesses.
I suppose the crunch comes, Anna Walker, in terms of sharing of
data, does it not, and just how that is going to work across the
piece? Let me give you an example. If a GP knows that a patient
is a drug addict or an alcoholic, and that might lead to the vulnerability
of the children of that family, is that to be shared across the
piece?
Mrs Walker: There is, of course,
huge confidentiality about the position of an individual patient
but it is often the case that we have a lot of information that
we can aggregate and which actually then does tell us something
about drug misuse in a particular area or obesity in a particular
area or issues about children's health which we can then use to
ask questions about that health care organisation's activity and
we can use, with the setting of targets which can reflect local
needs and can encourage improvement in the system—because,
as I am sure you know, from 2005-06 the strategic health authorities
are going to be looking at local targets with the local organisations,
and our job will be to monitor against those targets. Those targets,
I think very encouragingly, are explicitly to be not just about
health care issues but to be drawn up alongside local authorities
so they take account of the health needs of the population as
well. There is something else actually that we are trying to put
into the system, which is about encouraging health care organisations
to look more broadly at the health, one way or another, of the
population, and that is that for the first time from 2005-06 the
assessment of the health care organisations is not going to be
just a question of our assessment of that organisation, but it
is going to take account of the views of local partners as well,
so the patient forums, the local authorities, the strategic health
authorities are actually drawn for the first time into the arena
of whether that local health care organisation is performing for
the broader needs of the population. In a sense, there is a bluntness
in the instrument, but what we hope is that it is encouraging
it in the right direction.
Q123 Chairman: We can see, Anna Walker,
that that is a good answer in terms of how you are going to drive
up systemic improvement—we can understand that—but
it does not really answer the question I asked about sharing information
and what is going to be a protected piece of information about
an individual and what is going to be shared. Earlier in my questioning
I asked about the difference between protecting the average child
and the vulnerable child. We all know that one of the real problems
is how quickly you can flag up that a child is vulnerable, and
in my experience as a constituency Member, it is the health visitor
who has access to domestic property is a crucial one, whereas
a social worker will very often be kept at the door. That has
certainly been my experience historically. It is A&E when
a child is brought in with unusual injuries. If all this inspection
is not going to end up with any shared information, at what stage
does a GP, a health visitor, a hospital doctor say "I think
social services ought to know about this"? What is the improvement
in the system if they cannot do that?
Mrs Walker: Our own code of practice
and those of the GPs and the health care workers is to share that
information when they believe that there is an issue that actually
does need to be investigated and pursued. That is our own role,
set out in our code of practice for how we deal with this question
of confidential information, because in some cases we recognise
that the issues are such that that confidentiality may need to
be breached for broader purposes.
Q124 Chairman: Where is that code
of conduct?
Mrs Walker: That is our own code
of conduct, something that we have actually consulted on, making
it clear that when we do believe that we, as an inspectorate,
are in receipt of a piece of information which we believe needs
to be acted on, we can act on it even if there is a breach of
confidentiality, but we will try to protect information about
particular patients or circumstances where we can.
Q125 Chairman: So in order to get
that information, would that individual case have to be put to
you?
Mrs Walker: No. What is most likely
to happen actually in our particular case is that somebody comes
to us with some serious concerns about a particular case, and
we get that through complaints and also through procedures for
whistle blowing activities for staff. Those issues we will take
very seriously indeed, and we will investigate or pursue as necessary
if we believe—our phrase, and I am sorry because it sounds
so bureaucratic—that there is patient safety at risk. Our
whole system is geared to ensuring that we act as we can.
Q126 Chairman: How would that work
in a school, David, in terms of a child that was coming to school
and there were clear signs of something pretty disturbing going
on in the home background? How bound are you by the sensitivity
of that information?
Mr Bell: We have quite a lot of
experience of this, Mr Chairman, particularly in our Early Years
work, where often complaints are brought to our attention. We
make the general point that we are not a child protection agency.
However, we have information and we are prepared to work with
those that are responsible for child protection. So, to take your
specific example, if, say, during the course of an inspection—and
this would be very unusual on a school inspection—an inspector
picked up some information, their responsibility would be to feed
that information to the head teacher, who in most cases would
be the designated person responsible for child protection, who
has certain responsibilities to inform local social services.
Similarly, in relation to our work in early years, if a parent
phoned up and made a complaint and we felt that complaint was
beyond a complaint just about car parking outside the child minder
but actually raised some very serious issues, we have established
protocols within Ofsted about how these are dealt with, and we
certainly have a within-the-same-day notification to the local
social services authority where we have a child safety or child
protection issue. I think it is important that the inspectorates,
whilst not child protection agencies per se, have in place
systems for doing it. The other comment I was going to make about
this whole issue is, Mr Chairman, I hope you will be reassured
to know that in one of the elements of our framework that we are
consulting on, one of the ways in which we will judge the effectiveness
of the management of services for children and young people is
the extent to which they work co-operatively with partners to
share information. It is a key issue for us in the inspection
system. One is to look at the individual child or person concerned,
but you would see what shared protocols there are, what the procedures
and information flows are, because if they are unclear or people
are uncertain about them, that should cause us some concern, in
particular the sorts of examples you have described where information
really does need to be shared between agencies.
Q127 Chairman: You can see why the
Committee wants to probe this, because the creation of the Children
Act is very much related to a particularly tragic case—not
entirely—and the public would feel cheated if we had set
up a whole new framework that actually did not address the ability
to be more sensitivised to when those sorts of vulnerable children
were really at risk.
Mr Bell: We need to be sensitivised
to them, and I think that the way in which we have put this together
demonstrates how sensitive we are to those gaps in services, those
information flows. What I would want to say though, Mr Chairman,
is that on inspection, however effective our services are in local
areas, we can never give an absolute guarantee that a child will
never come to harm again. What we try to do at service delivery
level and inspection is to try over time to identify the greatest
risks, and then seek to minimise those risks, hence the priority
given to information sharing, because that appears from some of
the headline cases to be one of those areas that is of most vulnerability.
Q128 Chairman: But we do know that
sharing of information is the key to this, is it not? All the
history shows sharing of information and knowing across the piece.
There are areas of confidentiality that make that difficult and
that is of concern to all of us that want to avoid another tragedy.
They will occur. We are human beings. There will be others, but
what we are trying to push you on is that in a sense we know in
institutions, in pre-school settings, in anything that is institutional,
your remit will run. What about the more marginal areas, the work
that Professor Pascal has done in Birmingham about children that
disappear because they are in refuges, that are very difficult
to track? Do you have a competence over places like refuges? How
does that operate, when you get to the difficult things for bureaucracies
to follow?
Mr Bell: This week, for example,
we commented on those young people who disappear from the education
system, and actually, one of the points we made this week is that
these young people become more and more vulnerable because they
are often wandering the streets, and, if they are below 16, they
are certainly not under the care of any educational establishment.
It is in a sense by definition harder if they are outside the
system, and what we have tried to do is to bring in services.
To give you a specific example, when we carried out some work
looking at alternative provision for key stage 4 youngsters between
the ages of 14 and 16, we were quite surprised how much of that
was unregistered, and we made the point about that. Some people
said, "That's just bureaucracy. These agencies are providing
good services." I would actually argue it is far more than
bureaucracy, because if you do not have registered provision,
there is no requirement to say who is there, and if you do not
know who is there, how do you know what is going on? So I think
it is important that, if we can identify those different sorts
of services that provide, we have them within the orbit not of
bureaucracy or regulation but in the orbit of sight, so we can
see them and we know what is going on.
Mr Behan: It is a fact that the
current guidance that all authorities work under in relation to
sharing information is "Working Together under the Children
Act", and that lays out quite clearly the duty that individuals
are under to share information where they think the safeguarding
of a child is an issue. What Lord Laming's report into Victoria
Climbié exposed are the issues about that being implemented
at a local level. So one of our roles as inspectorates is to ensure
that we are focusing on precisely this group of children that
you are exploring in your questioning to make sure that those
children are indeed being protected. So, as David said, we will
look at the arrangements for partnership that are in place, particularly
the new arrangements for replacing child protection committees,
safeguarding boards which will operate at a local level. We will
want to know that they know the children that are in those communities
that are at risk and that there are robust plans in place to deal
with them. As David said, never say never, but what we are looking
for is to ensure that people are clear about those and, as you
said, what the Victoria Climbié case identified is children
that previously had not really been seen by authorities: a child
from Africa into France and then from France into England. I think
what that has done is heightened the awareness of how systems
need to operate at a local level. Our role as an inspectorate
is to ensure that we are clear in the way that we are working
with authorities at a local level about how they identify the
children in their area, asking questions, not just about children
that may disappear but children that we know about, children that
may be involved in prostitution, for instance, all those groups,
to make sure that there are partnerships in place locally that
are working to develop those services. I think that is a distinction
I would draw between our role as inspectorates and what the local
services need to be doing about sharing information. If as part
of our inspection activity we are looking at a particular case
or indeed speaking to a child or an adult, and there are particular
concerns reflected to our inspectors, then again, we have protocols
to share information about what that child or that adult share
with us. One of the things behind Helen Jones's question took
me back to the debate that was going on around the time the Green
Paper was being developed on the back of Lord Laming's recommendations,
and it was about the importance of services intervening early
and developing preventative strategies. So to go back to the outcomes
that we were talking about earlier, there are a number of outcomes
in there about prevention: preventing suicide, preventing children
being absent from school, which are all designed to ensure that
the appropriate preventative action is being taken to ensure that
there is that web of services at a local level designed to prevent
some of the problems that might occur to children. Again, our
job is to ensure that partnerships are in place, and they are
aware of the needs of children, and preventative strategies are
being adopted, not to intervene when problems have become acute
and chronic but to intervene at an early stage to ensure that
children are not passing through services, particularly vulnerable
children, so that we are getting that fabric of services around
them. A lot of the debate about how local partnerships will operate
through early years work, for instance, are designed to identify
problems that might occur at a later stage and begin to weave
that web of services that there needs to be at a local level.
One of the questions we might ask as inspectorates on a children's
inspection would be about the fabric of preventative services
that are being developed at a local area and whether it is related
to the needs of the local population so that services can be targeted
and directed. As my comments suggest, I think this is one of the
key areas. We need to make sure that we are looking at vulnerable
children as well as at all children through the inspection activity
we take forward.
Q129 Valerie Davey: It seems to me
that if as an education service we have lost 10,000 children off
our books, then all the sensitivity about the issues you are talking
about becomes almost irrelevant. Victoria Climbié was known:
she was known to social services, she was known to the church,
she was known to the school, and we failed her. What about the
children who are not known, and what about this 10,000? I do not
think we can go on. I can remember coming into national politics
in 1997, when there were 13,000. It is give or take that figure
still. What are we doing about those 10,000?
Mr Bell: It is an issue that we
do look at and we will continue to look at in the future under
this framework, what local authorities and schools are doing.
It comes right down to that level. What is the institution that
knows those children best? It is the local school. Every child
has to be registered either on the books of a school or in a pupil
referral unit. What tends to happen in some cases, sadly, is out
of sight, out of mind. Do not forget we are talking about some
of the most damaged and difficult young people, and if they do
not turn up at school, sometimes people think "Thank goodness
they are not here," because it is less hassle for everybody
else, including students and teachers. People do feel that, and
what happens is these youngsters drift off, and then after a while
there is a referral to an education welfare service, and actually,
it then becomes more and more difficult. We should not lose sight
of the number of young people, certainly of 15 plus, who are away
from home and are actually out all together. So it is not a case
of somebody can go up to their house and knock the door and say
"Why is such and such not at school?" Many of these
young people just go elsewhere. I think the issue starts all the
way back that, however difficult a young person is, it is the
school's responsibility to alert those services that are going
to do something alongside the school as soon as possible. I agree
with you. I think it remains one of the most alarming aspects
of our education system that so many youngsters just drop out
of view.
Q130 Valerie Davey: So the outcome
of staying safe is fundamental, and the less we know that children
are safe, then we cannot actually implement the other outcomes.
Mr Bell: It is a bit like school
attendance, when we say "If you don't turn up, you won't
learn." If we do not know where you are, how can we tell
if you are safe?
Q131 Chairman: I was just pondering
on some of the answers we had, Anna Walker, from you. I have a
note from one of our special advisers that the Royal College of
GPs has indicated they would be prepared to share sensitive information
about particular cases within the primary health care team but
not beyond that, and especially not to the sort of database envisaged
by the Children Act. Is that an accurate reflection on the situation?
Mrs Walker: I am not aware of
that position. I am again very happy to take that away and come
back to you on it, and to see whether that position is consistent
with the statutory requirements.[3]
Q132 Paul Holmes: The emphasis in
Every Child Matters is on integrated inspection teams.
What exactly will one of those look like in practice? How many
people will there be on it? Exactly a quarter from each organisation,
or what?
Mr Bell: Not necessarily as arithmetically
precise as you describe it. A team might be somewhere between
half a dozen and eight people. We would certainly expect representation
in the main from CSCI and Ofsted. There will be somebody from
the Audit Commission as well, and crucially, going back to what
Steve said earlier, they will act as a bridge between the joint
area review work and the wider corporate assessment work, and
in some ways that is the sort of practical embodiment of the integration
that Steve has described. In our inspections, based on what I
said earlier, we will deploy inspectors from other inspectorates,
including the Healthcare Commission, depending on the circumstances
of the area. So, for example, we might be in an area where there
were specific issues around juvenile justice, and therefore we
might call upon our colleagues in one of the criminal, justice
inspectorates. We are not going to be absolutely precise in every
circumstance. Part of our rationale for this is that you have
bespoke inspection teams to deal with particular circumstances,
but that is broadly how it is going to look.
Q133 Paul Holmes: So do the various
organisations envisage that they will have specific inspectors
who are trained to do this type of work and they will not be working
on other projects?
Mr Bell: We have had quite a big
debate about this around the table. I think our view as a steering
group of chief inspectors looking at this was we did not want
people just to dip in and out with no specific training, one week
here, one week there. I think it is important, particularly for
those that will be doing this for the majority of their time,
to have a substantial training and experience in it. Of course,
circumstances will dictate. Sometimes you have to do it, but certainly
from CSCI's perspective and Ofsted's perspective, we are likely
to have a cadre of people who will be doing this for the bulk
of their time and we think that is the right way to do it, because
this will require specialist expertise and we think it is important
we devote sufficient resource to doing it.
Q134 Paul Holmes: Why the difference
then from Ofsted's point of view? ATL, in the evidence they have
submitted, have said—and they will be reassured by what
you have said, I think—that the current practice of using
contracted-out casual labour for school inspections has made it
more difficult for Ofsted to get consistency of expertise and
judgment. Why adopt a different approach for this type of inspection?
Mr Bell: The ATL certainly framed
that in a particularly pejorative manner, it has to be said. The
point is that we want to use in the main full-time inspectors
working on this business. That would be consistent in fact with
what we have done in our previous lives. For example, when we
work with the Audit Commission on LEA inspection, although we
use some people as additional inspectors, in the main it is the
full-time staff of Ofsted, and it is the full-time staff of the
Audit Commission. It has been the case in the work we did previously
for the social services inspectorate. In the main, we use our
full-time staff. You might say that still does not answer the
question of why there is one approach in one sector. There is
simply an issue of numbers. You have 24,000 schools to be inspected.
We have 150 upper-tier authorities to inspect if one is looking
at the council functions, and therefore it is more do-able to
do it with your own staff. Certainly I know that historically,
the different organisations have had additional inspectors to
join their teams, although these have often been people who have
been quite experienced and built up an expertise in this kind
of inspection activity. There is one other comment I would make
about this—we have made it twice before and I think we should
make it again—there are certain things that we will no longer
be doing as discrete inspection activity, and we think that is
part of our contribution to making the inspection system more
proportionate. There will no longer be a freestanding local education
authority inspection, there will no longer be a connection service
inspection, there will no longer be a 14-19 area inspection, and
my colleagues will be able to cite the things that they will not
be doing. That is very important if these arrangements are going
to be proportionate, and we think that is a vital principle, and
it is an important way of reassuring people that we are not going
to over-inspect them.
Q135 Paul Holmes: Steve said earlier
that they had already started training inspectors for this role,
and David Bell said the same, and you are going to expand that
after Christmas. How joined up is the training? At the moment
is it separate training for separate institutions?
Mr Bell: No. We are bringing the
people together to train jointly. We think it is terribly important.
Steve might want to talk about the corporate performance assessment
part of CPA, because obviously that is separate, but certainly
Steve's colleagues will be part of joint area review as well,
and they will be part of that training. No, it is a very important
principle that the people that each of the inspectorates are likely
to use come together and train together. That is terribly important.
It would just miss the point if we went off and trained our own
people completely separately.
Q136 Paul Holmes: So the training
that both of you referred to as already having begun is joint
training?
Mr Bundred: The training which
has already begun in relation to corporate assessment has not
been joint training yet, but those people who will be undertaking
corporate assessments will additionally receive joint training
for the role that they will play in the joint area review.
Q137 Chairman: What about early years?
You have two levels of inspection at early years already. You
do two different kinds of inspection depending on the early years
setting.
Mr Bell: That is driven by legislation.
We have Children Act inspections, which are the functions that
Ofsted took over in 2001. In fact, we have three inspections actually,
because we also have what are called section 122 inspections,
which is where nursery education has an education component previously
started under the nursery voucher scheme, and thirdly, we have
section 10 school inspections, which also covers the early years.
The Government's child care strategy which was published a couple
of weeks ago by the Chancellor lays out a medium term intention
for regular reform in this area post 2005 and we are all for that,
because I think it is fair to say that the legislation is overlapping.
Q138 Chairman: You do not think inspection
in early years is good enough yet?
Mr Bell: I think there are confusing
overlaps. So, for example, we can turn up at a school which provides
both child care and its normal business, and actually by legislation
have to report separately. Under our new arrangements for school
inspection we are going to make that a single inspection activity.
It is something in fact we have not actually discussed this afternoon,
but one of the other dimensions of children's services inspection
is that we inspectorates already have to work together, for example,
in residential boarding provision. As far as we can, we are aiming
to inspect together at the same time, so that we avoid the burden
of a provider saying, "Last week I had them, this week I've
got you and I've got somebody else next week." I think there
is regulatory reform still to come on this one, absolutely, and
we are up for that.
Mr Behan: There is a whole raft
of our work about the regulation of services which we also think
needs to be reviewed. We have recently issued a consultation document
to look at the changes in the regulatory framework. The examples
are we would regulate children's homes, independent fostering
agencies, independent adoption agencies, so there is a similar
need to get coherence about our inspection and regulatory activity
across the piece, which sits next to the questions you are asking
David about in relation to early years services. So we have begun
the process of how we carry out the joint area reviews and integrated
inspection, but we need to incorporate into that the judgments
about how we regulate services at a local level and get even further
coherence. Some of that requires changes to minimum standards
in the regulatory framework itself and in some cases primary legislation.
So it is important we carry those discussions back to Government
about how we can look at the regulatory framework to ensure that
there is coherence. There are some areas where we have duplication
around the licensing function of fostering services; we are responsible
for inspecting local authority fostering services and independent
fostering services, so we could go into a local authority and
ask them about the fostering services immediately following having
been in currently to do a children's inspection. We think that
is a layer of overlap and duplication which is not necessary,
so to get a more elegant fit of the way we carry out these functions
is important. There is much more to do. We have begun a process
of reform and modernisation but there is more to do.
Mr Bell: I think there are some
important questions to ask about where we should stop regulating,
never mind eliminate overlap. For example, one of my colleagues
says that I should get out of the Whacky Warehouse. I do not think
they mean me personally, but if you go to the Whacky Warehouse
creche facilities, up on the wall you will see my signature saying
that this Whacky Warehouse is suitable for use, so says Ofsted.
If that is the kind of couple of hours maximum creche facility,
you might see it on the Ikea ball park or whatever, is there a
question about whether the state should be regulating that kind
of activity? That opens up all sorts of other questions. People
say, "It's not as safe as it might be if you are not regulating
it." I think there is a very serious debate to be had about
the future of regulation and where we regulate and being more
intelligent, to use an expression that Steve cited, and get out
of regulating things that perhaps we should not be regulating.
Chairman: That may be true, Chief Inspector,
but the fact of the matter is that when we did our early years
inquiry, what was evident from that—and Helen and Val will
remember this—was that what was of great value, reasonable
high quality delivery at the earliest stage, even in terms of
the setting of the Whacky Warehouse, was that you picked up problems
early on. In the case that we were looking at, special educational
needs problems could be looked at and moved on much earlier in
a child's development. I hear what you say but I think we have
to have a longer conversation on that before we would be fully
convinced. Even in terms of the vulnerable child, the earlier
you notice the child is vulnerable the better.
Q139 Paul Holmes: Ofsted's empire
grows and grows: schools, FE, nurseries, play groups, child minders,
Whacky Warehouses and now you are the lead organisation covering
everything from health to social services in this respect, yet
like all the rest of the civil service, you are supposed to be
getting rid of 20% of your staff. Can you take on all the extra
functions and get rid of one-fifth of your staff?
Mr Bell: The important thing to
say in relation to children's services is that we are collaborating
with other organisations, and it has been a serious consideration
for all of us. It is not just Ofsted that is subject to these
reductions; my colleagues here in all the inspectorates are subject
to the same requirements. The other financial pressure, if I can
put it that way, probably comes from the centre of Government,
saying what is all this going to cost? Is it more burdensome than
it used to be? We have devised a system that we have to be able
to fund within our existing and future budgets. That is the case
for Ofsted; we factored this into the budget reductions that you
have described. I know my colleagues have said exactly the same.
They will fund the contribution that they are making to this,
and they are going to have to fund that against a reducing base,
because all of us are having to make reductions in line with the
Chancellor's spending programme.
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