Wilt has been asked to publish the following anonymously:
Dear Mr Loughton…when are you going to get hold of both these organisations and clean the Augean stables. If you don’t they”ll continue to make monkeys of all of you….not a pleasant thought eh!!
The Ofsted Inspection of Cafcass N1 November 2010.
A Forensic Analysis by an eyewitness practitioner.
The Author.
I am a qualified and experienced practitioner who needs to remain anonymous due to the Cafcass practice of vindictive prosecutions of any member of the Cafcass workforce who speaks out on any work related issue and who’s experience differs from that of the Cafcass executive. See links to Charles Place, Jasvinder Bains etc.
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-care-the-big-picture/2010/09/cafcass-misused-regulation-in-trying-to-silence-criticism.html
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2011/01/13/116097/gscc-may-have-breached-social-workers-human-rights.htm
The Issues.
Both Cafcass and Ofsted have been viewed as failing organisations in recent years and both have a verdict of, “Not fit for purpose”, hanging over them in spite of their corporate protestations.
Both organisations are earmarked for reform. It is the purpose of this report to aid that reform by accurately telling you what actually happened in Cafcass N1 in 2010 and then measuring this against the written evidence of the significant parties.
Sources of Evidence.
1. Ofsted Inspection Report of Cafcass N1 region dated 26/11/2010
2. Cafcass Press Releases dated 15th December 2010
3. F.O.I. request to, and reply from, Ofsted in April 2011
4. Letter to Anthony Douglas, CEO Cafcass from John Goldup, National Director, Inspection Development, Ofsted.
5. Excerpts and quotes from a variety of House of Commons Select Committee Reports involving Cafcass, Ofsted and ` NAPO.
Ofsted detail their methodology for this inspection and come to the following conclusion;
“Inspection of Cafcass in N1 – North and South of Tyne
This letter summarises the findings of the recent inspection of Cafcass in
North and South of Tyne which was conducted on 17 and 18 November 2010.
The inspection was carried out under sections 143–145 of the Education and inspections Act 2006. I would like to thank all of the staff we met for their assistance in undertaking this inspection.
- The inspection sampled the quality and effectiveness of progress that is being made against the Cafcass Transformation Plan through aspects of the existing published framework for the inspection of Cafcass, focusing on aspects of:
ambition and prioritisation
- performance management
- safeguarding
- service responsiveness.
Inspectors considered a range of evidence, including: case records;
observation of family court advisers undertaking duty arrangements; and
other information provided by stakeholders, staff and managers. Inspectors also spoke to a range of staff including managers, family court advisers, other practitioners and administrative staff.
Overall progress
Judgement: “Good progress”.
As I was reading the inspection report for the umpteenth time a thought leaped out at me that I hadn’t previously considered and that was about for whom is this report written? and how useful this report would be to them?
This is an excerpt from the Ofsted vision statement;
“To contribute to improving services and their outcomes for users we will report with impartiality and integrity. We will communicate our findings with, and listen to, all who have an interest in improving them, from service providers to policy-makers. We want to raise aspirations and contribute to a longer term vision for achieving ambitious standards“.
Methodology.
Much as been made of the knowledge and expertise of Ofsted inspectors when inspecting specialised services for children. It would appear that Ofsted like many other public services subscribe to the current managerial orthodoxy that anyone with managerial or strategic experience can be dropped in to manage any enterprise including child protection services without prior adequate, ”domain knowledge”, of those services so I asked Ofsted for the qualifications and relevant experiences of those inspectors in a F.O.I. request.
They answered:
“Ofsted do not hold specific C.V.’s for the inspectors beyond normal H.R. material. Their qualifications and experience are their personal information and therefore exempt.”
So we can conclude that we don’t know if the qualifications and professional experiences of inspectors are necessary and sufficient for them to be able to inspect Cafcass with any degree of integrity or authority.
I find this bizarre that a public authority charged with the qualitative inspection of services for vulnerable children and which is predicated on possessing superior knowledge and authority to those services it inspects does not choose to promote the knowledge and expertise of those officers carrying out inspections.
Further I find it incomprehensible that Ofsted should use the personal data defence when it must be a pre-requirement before appointment that all prospective inspectors must supply a full list of all prior employment and study to Ofsted.
Current political thought calls for greater openness and transparency in public services and I would hope that Ofsted’s current policy in this respect comes under scrutiny and challenge.
This inspection was a paper exercise, very little interaction took place between inspectors and practitioners. Ofsted says that,
“Cases were selected randomly from a list of recently completed cases supplied by Cafcass”
On the day of the inspection Mr Darren Shaw, Cafcass Operational Director for the North, descended on the Cafcass office with an entourage of assistants, some drafted in at very short notice from distant parts of the U.K.
Major disruption was experienced by practitioners as these bureaucrats set up forward H.Q. Desks were moved, drawers emptied, staff shunted hither and thither whilst fighting the infection of inspection anxiety emanating from these invaders like garlic breath.
Mr Shaw and his merry band were up until 2 am in the morning reading, assessing, weeding and pre-selecting files presumably so that those busy Ofsted inspectors didn’t have to do this for themselves. Would this degree of pre-selection work qualify as putting your best goods at the front whilst hiding the inferior at the rear in an attempt to steer the inspectors towards, “good files“. Just asking!
At the very least it casts doubt on the dictionary definition of “randomly”.
I don’t wish to impugn the quality of my colleagues or indeed my own work in relation to case files but we all know that what both Cafcass and Ofsted want to see in a case file doesn’t correspond to the actuality as practitioners do not have enough time with current caseloads to maintain pristine files.
However, even with pre-selected reports the inspectors found some disquieting inconsistencies,
“Some quality assurance processes, such as supervision and
management oversight of reports are not sufficiently rigorous. As a
result, the quality of reports presented to court is too variable“.
It seems to me that this is just as much a criticism of managers as it is of practitioners as all reports are quality assured to pre-determined standards by managers before they are presented to the parties and to courts. Also whilst mention of supervision is made this term is redundant in Cafcass and caseload capacity and allocation should be substituted.
Caseloads are mentioned in passing by Ofsted and I quote,
” the combination of a large amount of residual work at the same time as needing to embrace a new system has resulted in some staff reporting that they feel unable to manage the increase in their workloads“.
Note how this issue is conflated with changes being implemented to moves towards a new system and by nature one would expect these changes and associated difficulties would be temporary. Nothing could be further from the truth which is that despite new and cut down approaches introduced into Cafcass on a crisis basis, there is still more work coming in the front door than can be managed safely with the current resource configuration in Cafcass and that the additional weight is being borne by practitioners.
The Ofsted report and subsequent press releases from Cafcass reveal an overarching priority bordering on obsession with allocation of a case to a named and substantive worker. This work, once allocated, is then left to the discretion of the individual worker to determine how much or in reality, how little they can safely expend working the case. This has led to huge increases in caseloads across the board with individual practitioners regularly working in excess of their statutory hours.
Inspectors were told this and other significant matters which impact directly on children and families in their meeting with practitioners, but as I asked Ofsted under a F.O.I. request for written minutes, they revealed that inspectors do not make formal minutes of these meetings only “limited notes”, which they didn’t supply to me.
We can deduce from the above that whatever practitioners had to say to the inspectors was regarded as irrelevant to the inspectors’ task and therefore was completely ignored.
What do the inspectors say about the management of N1, and I quote:
“The Head of Service and the newly appointed management team have an accurate understanding of the strengths and challenges of the service area. The area business plan appropriately prioritises the key areas for effective delivery and improvement of services to children and families”.
What the inspectors don’t tell us are the circumstances which resulted in 3 managers being newly appointed and the other manager supplied by an agency. One manager is a replacement for a manager on maternity leave, the others are replacements for managers who have left Cafcass under mysterious circumstances. 2 of these managers were on long term sick leave during the inspection and have subsequently left Cafcass employ. So out of 4 managers on the staff establishment of N1 3 are newly appointed and one is a long term agency manager. What has gone on in N1 to have a clean sweep of managers at a time of crisis for Cafcass. We may never know as Ofsted either didn’t ask or didn’t consider this fact important enough to comment on.
But don’t worry there is a business plan:
“The system is currently supported through the use of additional temporary staff who will leave Cafcass in January 2011. Plans are in place to ensure the sustainability of the system when this resource ends”
These agency staff including a service manager are still working in N1.… 5 months after the inspection with no end in sight. So the above information is inaccurate to say the least.
Darren Shaw, Operational Director went out of his way to praise managers and said in the press release dated 15-12-10:
“The report particularly highlights the effectiveness and leadership of the Head of Service and local management team and the role they have played in improving our service”.
What leadership? What effectiveness? Is it effective to lose key managers at a time of crisis. Is it good leadership to continue to employ an agency service manager for nearly a year with the increased cost of this to the public purse? Is it good leadership to allow inaccurate information to be printed in an Osted report?
However Darren Shaw then moves on to staff after he has fulsomely praised his managerial minions and by implication, himself. He says:
“However, all staff can be proud of this result and I know that they will continue to work together to provide children in the area with the help and support they need.”
Ofsted inspectors single out the work of Family Support Workers in N1. They say:
‘Wishes and Feeling’ reports produced by family support workers are
good and effectively allow children to voice their concerns and influence plans for their future. These reports are appreciated by the courts in helping them make considered decisions“.
Anthony Douglas re-iterates this in the press release of 15-12-2010 thus:
“In particular, they,(the inspectors) highlighted the way in which our wishes and feelings reports effectively allow children to voice their concerns and influence plans for the future and are key in helping the courts to reach a decision in their best interests“.
So Cafcass Family Support Workers get an honourable mention for their work by inspectors. Inspectors who didn’t speak to them or observe them in practice but whose work was validated by the judiciary. It is curious in their celebratory press releases Family Support Workers are not singled out or mentioned by role either by Darren Shaw or Anthony Douglas. Is this because they are the only practitioners in Cafcass today who one can reliably say that they have regular contact with children and young people in the normal course of their work.
As opposed to the deliberately misleading response Anthony Douglas gave to the recent M.O.J. Select Committee in relation to questions about direct work with children. I quote from the uncorrected minutes of the House of COMMONS Oral EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE the Justice Committee The Operation of the Family Courts Tuesday 22 March 2011
:“Anthony will answer the question about the staffing levels.
Anthony Douglas: If I may, because I think several questions refer to that. 91.5% of our staff are front line. 61% are family court advisers, children’s guardians, practitioners in private law cases. 4.5% are family support workers. As Martha said, they do carry out some pretty effective wishes and feelings work with children. Their backgrounds are diverse and they have sometimes 10 or 20 years working with children in different settings and sectors.
9% of our staff are front-line managers. These are service managers responsible for perhaps 10 to 12 practitioners. When I chaired the London Guardians’ Panel throughout most of the 1990s, we had one panel manager to over 120 guardians. It really is not sustainable to do without front-line management these days, both to keep standards and to support, protect and challenge staff carrying out very difficult work. 17% of our staff are front-line business support staff. They talk to people using our service.
Q261 Chair: I am afraid I am slightly puzzled by the addition of the words “front line” to each category of staff.
Anthony Douglas: They are defined by our Secretary of State. Certainly our business support staff, our first line managers as well as practitioners, are defined as front line, and we are following, of course, Cabinet Office guidelines about recruitment at the moment. They are, if you like, officially defined, and they are, front line.
Q262 Claire Perry: What percentage of your staff actually spend the majority of their time working with children?
Anthony Douglas: About 65%”.
Q263 Claire Perry: So 65% are actually what we would think of as front line, as in out there actually blocking and tackling with the children.
Anthony Douglas: Yes.
Anthony Douglas gives deliberately misleading information to Parliament and this isn’t challenged or verified after the fact. It needs to be….. and if Ofsted were concerned they could check the veracity of such claims during inspections and report back to the appropriate authorities. All they say is that:
In almost all cases seen by inspectors, the needs of the child or young person were the prime focus for the practice“.
This judgement is based solely on the reading of case files and cannot possibly tell the whole story but it is still pleasing that commitment to children is recognised and recorded.
Baroness Howarth says this about Cafcass’ work to the select committee:
“Baroness Howarth: We are child focused. You have to accept that within our remit the child is always the centre of our work, always the centre of the case, always the centre of concern“.
Given that this issue of direct involvement with parents and children has become the source of considerable dispute within Cafcass and with some of our partner agencies, one would have thought that testing of Cafcass claims would be implicit in Ofsted’s work.
So ….no service users were seen, no direct work with children observed, no interaction between a practitioner and a service user observed. Inspectors contact with practitioners limited to the bare minimum. What did inspectors think they were going to get?
A methodology of a social work service inspection that doesn’t include observation of practice with children, young people and parents by suitably qualified and experienced inspectors is deeply flawed if not holed below the water line.
So it’s judgement time.
Methodology – Failed – and the written report would also fail the evidence test in law.
Target Audience and communicability – no idea who this report is aimed at…cannot be service users…can it? – Failed
Accuracy – contains inaccurate information – Failed
Value for Money – Anthony Douglas says that each inspection costs Cafcass between 180 to 250K. The inspection report consists of 1074 words some of which are inaccurate and some incomprehensible. 225K divided by 1074 = £232.77 per word. – Failed
In all the material that I read concerning Ofsted and Cafcass the most compelling and concise evidence came from NAPO, the trades union representing Cafcass practitioners, who said to the Education Select Committee on the effectiveness of Ofsted:
“48. What the purposes of inspection should be (relating not only to schools but to all organizations, settings and services under Ofsted’s remit):
The purpose of the inspection should be ensuring public services are satisfactory and value for money. Ofsted inspections do not do this. Largely paper based inspections are unlikely to obtain an accurate picture of what is happening. In Napo’s view Inspectors need to have much greater understanding of the service they inspect. Inspections that observe practice, and in which Inspectors talk to staff are more likely to produce an accurate picture of what is happening. Any changes necessary would be more likely to succeed if Inspectors met with practitioners and discussed any concerns they have and listened to the practitioner’s comments and explanations.
49. Too often inspectors judge practitioners’ work by criteria that practitioners were not aware of, and often do not agree are valid. Reports should be a lot more than a series of statements if they are to be credible. They need to include detailed evidence and analysis. This much more likely to involve front line staff in a positive manner and make it much more likely that any changes will be effective, and will happen. The current practice of top down pronouncements in blunt and unpleasant terms, concentrating on files rather than talking to people, and little dialogue with practitioners has led to the dysfunctional service described above.
50. Napo believes Inspections are important and that the current inspection regime deprives organizations of information that could be helpful in making services better.
53. The consistency and quality of inspection teams in the Ofsted inspection process – This is also covered above. We have set out below two revealing examples of current practice:-
a.Six practitioner reports were examined using the same criteria by Cafcass managers and Ofsted Inspectors. Cafcass managers graded all six as inadequate, Oftsed Inspectors graded two as inadequate, two as satisfactory and two as good.
b.Initial Court reports contain some background information, addendum reports do not. Despite this being explained, Inspectors judged all addendum reports to be inadequate because they had no background information.
Napo believes Ofsted should be radically reformed and broken up into smaller units, so that inspectors and managers at all levels have substantial experience, qualifications and knowledge of the services they are inspecting.
A couple of postscripts.
It was known that Anthony Douglas and Baroness Howarth met with senior Ofsted executives to discuss inspection regimes in 2010.
One might think that this may have been an attempt for one organisation not fit for purpose to approach another failing organisation and collude to produce and implement a plan which would be mutually favourable to each.
Given what Anthony has said about inspections….here’s a flavour ….Anthony to the Education Select Committee on the effectiveness of Ofsted:
“Q259 Chair: So are you better regulated now than you were in 2006?
Anthony Douglas: I haven’t noticed a great deal of difference in terms of either the volume or the impact. As Eleanor said, the unannounced inspections are better for two reasons. First, they don’t cost as much. The announced full monty is really an industry, and just too big. But we should all be ready for unannounced inspections. They are not costing much, and I do not personally think they should be confined to poorer-performing organisations, because the best, or the supposed best, can quickly become the worst, and the worst can quickly become the best. The best aren’t as good as they sometimes say they are. The worst aren’t as bad as they sometimes say they are. A random, unannounced, focused inspection, with a sector-led agreed methodology within an outcomes framework, would help us all….(clear as mud Anthony…ed)
Q260 Chair: So you’re glad that Ofsted took over from what was the Court Service.
Anthony Douglas: Well, we are where we are.
Q261 Chair: Is that a yes or a no, Anthony?
Anthony Douglas: I’m glad that CAFCASS is inspected by a children’s inspectorate and not a court inspectorate.
Anthony goes on:
“There are some very woolly peer review systems that are much too cosy and tell you little compared with an independent inspectorate. The methodology has to be agreed, and the people doing it have to be inspector-minded. What Ofsted can do-it is its core business-is training inspectors who can go somewhere and know quickly, over a couple of hours, through looking either at a school or at some social care records, what is going on“.
So there we are…. Anthony Douglas thinks that by looking at a couple of case records inspectors will know what is going on.
Then he goes on:
“Anthony Douglas: I’m not sure grading contributes enormously to improvement. Obviously, if you are criticised, the argument could be made that you are forced to improve, but I think it’s similar to the overstatement of the role of Ofsted. The factors that drive all of us now are much greater transparency, the press and politicians, and Ofsted is one of a number of factors that mean you have to get better all the time. I think that the grading process is sometimes insidious and undermining, and it can breed over-confidence if it’s good, and it can leave you feeling devastated and unable to get to grips with something if it’s too critical. I think it is too pejorative, especially the use of words such as “inadequate” or “satisfactory”, because it’s such a broad brush. All of us have to meet basic standards and if you’re not meeting them, having an improvement plan that is inspected properly would get better outcomes“.
This is hypocrisy of the first water as Cafcass adopted the Ofsted gradings in their so-called supervision system Q4C, (Quality for Children….get it), for use on practitioners. Hence a number of practitioners have had this tag of inadequate hung on them by Cafcass managers and then left out to dry. The perniciousness of having such a label placed on any emotionally intelligent person is damaging to their self esteem….at least Ofsted applied it to a corporate service.
In my search for evidence to support or refute the above proposition that Cafcass and Ofsted may be working hand in glove, I posed a number of F.O.I. requests to Ofsted including requests for minutes of meetings between Cafcass and Ofsted. I was sent a copy of a letter from John Goldup of Ofsted to Anthony Douglas of Cafcass. Apart from Mr Goldup’s maty-ness I hadn’t expected my search to encompass comic possibilities but on reading Mr Goldup’s letter for the umpteenth time I am still reduced to tears…..read it and you’ll see what I mean. If anyone can explain what it means, using the English language I’ll be eternally grateful….meanwhile
At Cafcass H.Q. Anthony Douglas is triumphant. An Ofsted “good”,…. proof that things are improving in Cafcass.
Anthony needs to celebrate ….so he clears his timetable and heads for Newcastle. Anthony has contacted the Head of Service and told her that he wants to take a group of selected employees out to a swanky Italian restaurant for dinner as a symbol of his gratitude.
These selected employees who included only managers and administrators got ready for their big night out but forgot to tell their colleagues ….you know those people who actually do the work…including the self same Family Support Workers who impressed Ofsted enough to mention them by name.
Anthony likes to think of Cafcass as an “inclusive”, organisation.
But whilst practitioners were eating coal …..at the ball things were happening. Apparently their soiree was interrupted by those rude men from Real Fathers for Justice which seemed very apt to me….see link.
http://news.realfathersforjustice.org/index.php?itemid=457
