News

There were slices of birthday cake all round when a report on the first 100 joint reviews of English and Welsh social services departments was published last month.

While Audit Commission and Social Services Inspectorate inspectors celebrated producing their fifth overview report, some councils could be forgiven for not wanting to join in the party.

This is because Delivering Results revealed that almost one-third of local authorities visited by the joint review team since their creation in 1996 were found to have "uncertain or poor prospects".¹ Just 8 per cent of councils were considered to have excellent prospects, with the rest being rated as promising (News, page 14, 18 October).

The last chapter of the report highlights the challenges facing joint reviews and contains the admission that the joint review team itself is "keen to reappraise its approach".

It says: "While feedback has recognised that joint reviews have been a significant influence on the wider inspection framework, it also urged the team to adapt and shift its own horizons in response to the changing environment in which is it now operating."

After the report's publication the Department of Health and the Welsh assembly commissioned a review of joint reviews and their role in the future arrangements for monitoring the delivery of social care. The review has now been completed by an independent consultancy, although no date has been set for the publication of its findings and recommendations.

The joint review team is undoubtedly eager to improve the way it monitors and assesses the work of social services departments. But what do local authorities think of the joint review process? Do joint reviews measure what they set out to?

Kate Page, strategic director of neighbourhood services at Milton Keynes Council, is sure they do. Her local authority has just been joint reviewed and is awaiting publication of the inspectors' final report and she describes the experience as "thought-provoking".

She says: "The reviewers came with a clear script of what they had to do and their draft report shows that they have kept to that. The outcome is a logical progression of what they set out to do."

A joint review team must get through a great deal of work in a short period, according to Shropshire Council's head of service for business support Mike Morris. Two reviewers inspected the authority during November and December last year and published their final report this June.

He says: "In terms of the time and resources available to each reviewer they do achieve a lot in a relatively short timescale.".

Peter Gilroy, director of social services at Kent Council, says the way reviews measure councils has become more sophisticated. "It is always difficult when people mirror back to you what they think your service is like, whether the feedback be good, bad or indifferent," he says.

But do joint reviews offer value for money? The joint review team spends an average of £55,000 when reviewing an English council. This covers all the costs from the receipt of the council's position statement on how it thinks it is performing to when the team publishes its final report approximately 10 months later. In Wales this increases slightly because joint reviews are published in English and Welsh.

For local authorities the cost of a joint review can be much higher. London Borough of Havering executive director of community services Anthony Douglas says the east London council spent £100,000 on its joint review. This includes £70,000 on three staff seconded to work on it full-time and £10,000 on producing the position statement before the review started.

The review's final report was published last month and stated that staff have "an obsession with the front line". Douglas says the review "was a catalyst for change" and resulted in the council backing the £750,000 action plan on what the social services department needs to do now.

Gilroy admits Kent spent "hundreds of thousands" on working on its joint review, which was conducted between December 2000 and February 2001, including the time staff spent on it. He describes it as a "productive but painful exercise" and says repeating the process across the country is not good value for money.

He says: "Reviews need to be shorter and focused on a number of smaller but important issues."

The impact of a review on front-line staff - particularly a negative one - can be enormous, says one adult services manager who wishes to remain anonymous and whose authority received a damning report in 1997. She says: "We knew we weren't doing brilliantly but we didn't think we were that bad. It was demoralising and unhelpful for staff."

And the reaction of management was not much better: "For management it was an obsession, as they felt it was them personally being inspected."

Being inspected was difficult for front-line staff, says a social worker working with vulnerable adults whose council was reviewed this year. He explains: "As a team we felt the reviewers already had preconceived ideas about the borough because of some of the negatives things they said."

Despite this, he believes joint reviews are still a valid method of measuring a council's progress. "In some ways a review helps front-line staff see the bigger picture because you can just get caught up with what you do. You are a tiny cog in a big council wheel and the review lets you see you are more than that."

The reviewers who visited Shropshire Council were "extremely professional and capable people", Morris says. "We were able to have a very open and frank dialogue with them throughout the process. They listened to what people said and when they had questions or needed further explanation they quickly made us aware of this."

One area that the joint review team could improve is their engagement with service users, according to the social worker with vulnerable clients.

Reviewers at his council had said they might want to meet his clients but did not confirm this, so clients were left waiting for appointments that never materialised.

The adult services manager thinks that not enough users are engaged by joint reviews, with those that are happy with the service unlikely to go out of their way to say so. She adds: "Such a sample-size is a dangerous thing for a solid base."

No council wants to be named and shamed by a joint review team and some councils may feel a pressure to make everything appear hunky dory.

There is no more vivid example of this than when Haringey Council's social services team was visited by the joint review team in March and April 1999. When its findings were published in November 1999 it reported that the local authority's child protection service seemed to be "safe" and "sound", despite low spending and high caseloads. When Victoria Climbie died three months later it was obvious that either things had rapidly deteriorated over the previous year, or that the joint review had made a mistake.

It is not the joint review team's intention to make councils pretend all services are doing well, says head of joint reviews John Bolton. He says such a reaction depends on how the council responds to being inspected: "Many local authorities approach joint reviews in an open and honest manner, as a way of getting an audit. Others want to put on a good show."

He adds that sometimes social services directors feel vulnerable about their own positions during a review because they think that they are being judged: "We try and be sensitive to this and recognise it."

Bolton says the rethink of joint reviews was required because of the need to reflect changes in the provision of health and social care services in the review process.

He says: "It is really important that we leave authorities with a change agenda they can recognise and it is one that can help drive them forward."

¹ SSI, Audit Commission, National Assembly for Wales, Delivering Results - Joint Review Team Fifth Annual Report 2000-1

This report is available to download in pdf format from www.joint-reviews.gov.uk/annrep01.html