Doncaster Council

Overview

Background: 

The Joint Area Review (JAR) is the approach to inspection introduced by the Children Act 2004.  It reflects the national agenda of bringing together Education and Social Care Services for Children and all other public sector and voluntary/community provision.  It replaces a number of previous inspection programmes.

OfSTED and the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) conduct the Inspection of all children's services provided by a range of public organisations and agencies in the local area.

Every local authority area will have a Joint Area Review (JAR) once every three years.  A Joint Area Review uses information from the Annual Performance Assessment (APA); the self-assessment that Local Authorities will be required to complete every year.

Doncaster was in the first group of authorities to have a Joint Area Review. The on-site Inspection took place in autumn 2005 (7th-18th November) and was conducted at the same time as a Youth Service Inspection and the Corporate assessment of the council.  The Joint Area Review Report, the Youth Service Report and the Corporate Assessment Report were all published in October 2006.         

How is the JAR linked to the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) and the Corporate Assessment (CA)?

The JAR produces the score for the Children and Young People element of the Comprehensive Performance assessment.  The Corporate Assessment (CA) forms a major part of the overall Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) process. 

The Council's Corporate Assessment (CA) consisted of a self assessment followed by an on-site inspection of the Council's overall management and partnership working, at the same time as the JAR on-site inspection.

The Joint Area Review Action Plan

Following publication of the JAR Report, the council was required to produce an Action Plan to show the issues and recommendations raised in the Report would be addressed.  The JAR Action Plan was published in January 2007.

All the actions contained in the Action Plan have now been incorporated into the main Children & Young People's Plan for Doncaster, and progress against them is managed by the Children & Young People's Partnership Trust. 

• JAR and CPA diagram - linking the processes