Frequently Asked Questions

Standard JAR Newsletter [ 37.0k] (updated 13 July 2006)

What is a Joint Area Review?
Joint Area Reviews (JAR) will evaluate and report on the extent to which services within an area improve the life chances of children and young people. They will focus on the experience of children and young people within Somerset across the five ‘Outcomes for Children’ set out in ‘Every Child Matters’:

Staying safe
Being healthy
Enjoying and achieving
Making a positive contribution
Achieving economic well-being

When will the JAR take place?
Joint Area Reviews (JAR) will be carried out every three years. The first reviews will take place in September 2005 and will cover each children’s services authority area by the end of 2008. In Somerset the Joint Area Review will take place in November 2006.

Who will be affected?
Services to be reviewed will include council services, health services, police, probation services, Connexions, the Learning and Skills Council and publicly-funded services provided by community and voluntary organisations.

The involvement of partners
Partners provide services which contribute to improving outcomes of children and young people. These services will be covered in the review, usually through the neighbourhood study or case tracking, but also when they make a contribution to a key judgement selected for fieldwork. The Joint Area Review will also pay particular attention to the effectiveness of the arrangements made by the director of children’s services in line with the requirements of the Children Act 2004, to cooperate with partners and the extent to which cooperation contributes to improving outcomes for children and young people.

Partners should be fully involved in the arrangements for the joint area review, through contributing evidence to the joint area review, including the local self-assessment especially, responding to the inspection report and subsequently devising the written statement of proposed action. Judgements will also be made on the extent to which voluntary and community organisations are engaged with other partners in decisions about the strategic development of provision, and how far appropriate action has been taken to build on the capacity of voluntary and community sector providers to provide high-quality services that offer value for money.

During the review, a small number of representatives from early years providers, schools and college staff may be asked to meet inspectors to contribute their views on local services. In addition, a small number of short visits may be made, especially for the case tracking and neighbourhood study, when the school or college makes a significant contribution to improving outcomes for children and young people.

Does the JAR replace all other inspections?
Details relating to the existing inspections that will be replaced or subsumed by the Joint Area Reviews and those continuing inspections from which findings will be drawn can be accessed here [ 40.2k]. Where separate inspections take place, these will be arranged as far as possible so that they link with the Joint Area Review.

Who is in the JAR review team?
Review teams will be multi-disciplinary and will always include inspectors from at least two bodies. Teams will have between four and eight members, with the number depending on the extent of fieldwork and whether an enhancement covers the youth service. Fieldwork review teams will normally include inspectors from Ofsted, the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI), the Healthcare Commission and, where appropriate, HMI Constabulary and the Adult Learning Inspectorate. An Audit Commission inspector will be a member of both the Joint Area Review and Corporate Assessment teams.

Timelines for Joint Corporate Assessment / JAR Programme

Stage	Date
Return of APA-JAR Dataset	31 May 2006
Development of JAR multi-agency self-assessment	20 May - 31 July 2006
Somerset County Council Recieve Briefing Pack from Ofsted	12 July 2006
Schools selected by Ofsted to undertake Tellus Survey	18 July 2006
Somerset to collate prescribed documents requested by Ofsted	July - Sept 2006
Somerset to return 3 neighbourhood studies and 100 case tracking files to Ofsted	14 September 2006
Joint JAR and CA Set up Meeting to finalise selection of the 10 case tracking files, the neighbourhood study and 10 key judgements to be considered as part of the fieldwork.	28 September 2006
JAR Self Assessment returned to Ofsted	16 October 2006
Analysis week - JAR inspectors on site	6 November to 10 November 2006
Fieldwork - inspectors will be undertaking site visits, focus groups, gathering views of children and young people.	27 November to 8 December 2006
Somerset County Council and partners will receive draft report from Ofsted	24 January 2007
Somerset County Council and partners to provide comment on draft report	7 February 2007
Somerset County Council receive final JAR report from Ofsted	21 February 2007
JAR feedback meeting with Ofsted and partners	23 February 2007
Publication of final report on website	13 March 2007

Self Assessment
The same template will be used for both the Annual Performance Assessment and Joint Area Reviews. Year on year, the assessment can be updated or refreshed rather than rewritten. The council will be asked to submit its completed self-assessment in late May annually for the purposes of annual performance assessment. When a Joint Area Review is scheduled in close proximity to this, the same self-assessment will be used. An opportunity to update it will be offered.

What will happen during the JAR?
Details relating to the JAR process can be accessed here [ 43.5k]. Two groups who will be covered in detail in every review: children and young people who are looked after by the council; and, children and young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. The full set of key judgements, illustrative evidence, performance data and key documents for use in the Joint Area Review can be accessed here. [ 391.7k]

Graded Judgements
Details relating to how the JAR inspection will be graded can be accessed here. [ 48.7k]

What will happen after the JAR?

Ofsted will send the report to the Somerset County Council and to the Secretary of State.
The report will be placed on Ofsted’s and other relevant inspectorates’ and commissions’ websites.
It is the responsibility of the Somerset County Council to circulate the report locally.
Within 30 working days of receiving it Somerset County Council will be required to send a copy to its relevant partners , its Local Safeguarding Children Board partners , at least one local newspaper and at least one local radio station, if requested.
Somerset County Council will also be required to make a copy available for inspection, free of charge, at its offices, and to supply a copy on demand for which it may make a reasonable charge.
It is open to the Council to publicise the report in other ways, for example through its website or by sending copies to services or service users.

Somerset County Council will be required, consulting its partners, to make a written statement of proposed action, or action plan, in light of the report. It will have 70 working days from receipt to do this. It will be required to send the action plan to those groups in receipt of the report, and to Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools and the Secretary of State; to make it available for inspection free of charge at its offices; and to supply a copy on demand for which it may make a reasonable charge.

Linkages with the Corporate Assessment
Joint Area Reviews will normally be conducted at the same time as the CPA Corporate Assessment. The structure of both processes and the arrangements for gathering evidence and reporting the findings are compatible so that duplication between the two processes is reduced and, where appropriate, evidence, findings and judgements can be exchanged.

The Corporate Assessment measures Somerset County Council's ability to:

engage with and lead their communities,
deliver community priorities in partnership with others,
ensure continuous improvement across the range of council activities.

Corporate Assessment will report as one of its five achievement themes the contribution of the council and its partners to the quality of outcomes for children and young people. Other themes will cover healthier communities, safer and stronger communities, outcomes for older people and sustainable communities, and transport. The content for the overall children and young people theme will be provided by the Joint Area Review.

Further information relating to the Corporate Assessment can be accessed here.

Key Guidance Documents
Key guidance documents and further information relating to the Joint Area Review can be accessed here.