Good partnerships vital to social care inspection, says commission
Wednesday 9 February 2005

Effective partnerships between the organisations responsible for new ways of inspecting social care are crucial to achieving good results for people who use the services, says the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI).

Also essential to the new approach is finding ways of enabling people to express their experiences and their views on services.

Dame Denise Platt, Chair of CSCI, said: "To achieve the highest quality of joined-up inspection of services for children and adults, it is vital that we continue to develop the closest working relationships with our partner inspectorates. We can combine our different areas of expertise to achieve the maximum benefits for people who use services.

"Fundamental to this is placing the people who use social care services at the centre of our work, to help them to achieve the quality of life that they need and deserve."

CSCI is currently reviewing the format of its inspection reports in the light of feedback from people using services, who have commented that the current structure is too technical and does not reflect the outcomes for those who use the services.

Dame Denise explained: "We are making our inspection reports easier for people to see what a care home or other service provider does well, how they might have improved and what aspects they still need to improve on. 

"Inspectors will seek the views of people who use the service, their families and their carers, and focus on these in making their judgements on the quality of services." 

Her comments followed a meeting of CSCI today when commissioners gave their broad support to a raft of proposals in consultation documents issued by other inspectorates.

Among them is a consultation by Ofsted, the education standards regulator, which has statutory responsibility under the Children Act 2004 for creating a framework for the integrated inspection of councils' children's services, in partnership with CSCI and eight other inspectorates. Ofsted is seeking views on its draft framework.

The other consultations are by:

the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), on the roles of two key appointments within local authorities – Director of Children's Services and Lead Member for Children's Services 
the Healthcare Commission, on its approach to assessing the performance of healthcare organisations in the NHS and the private sector 
the Audit Commission, on changes to the format of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment, which incorporates judgements on the quality of councils' social care services.