Helping families get the right help at the right time: Celebrating 10 years of the Joint Targeted Area Inspection

On this podcast, we have Helen Davis, who's Head of National and Joint Inspection from HMI Probation, Lucy Hart, the Deputy Director and Multi-Agency Operations from CQC, Simon Alexander, the Associate Inspector from HMICFRS and Paul DInverno, Ofsted's HMI Specialist Advisor. We’re also joined by Sarah Jones and Tanya Fulcher from Norfolk County Council.

Cait Mellow I'd like to welcome everybody to another episode of Ofsted Talks and this time we are talking about the JTAI, the Joint Targeted Area Inspection. This is a complex inspection where different agencies such as the Care Quality Commission, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation, Ofsted, and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue all arrive in a local area at the same time and work together to inspect lots of different services that are supporting children. The Joint Targeted Area Inspections, JTAIs as we call them, we’ve been holding these for ten years. So do we all do all inspections that are done under this banner or is it sometimes us and CQC or HMICFRS. How does it work? Paul, do you want to talk us through that?

Paul DInverno Yeah, so we've been undertaking joint target area inspections now for 10 years, so it's a good chance for reflection. In terms of, we do two types now. We do thematic inspections, which is Ofsted, of both children’s social care and education and HMI Probation, the Care Quality Commission and HMICFRS. So we all join together for the thematic inspections and they give a very unique insight into multi-agency working. And we also do an inspection of initial need and risk, sometimes known as the ‘front door’. And that's just CQC, HMICFRS and Ofsted to undertake those inspections.

Cait Mellow So when you say the front door, what does that mean?

Paul DInverno Well, we're looking at the initial response when need or risk is first identified for children. And we look at that through the window of individual agencies response. So some aspects of health, the police response and also children's Social Care and what is often referred to as the MASH multi-agency safeguarding hub where that exists and it's about the assessment of risk and need, the appropriate decision making and ultimately whether children and families get the right help at the right time.

Cait Mellow Okay, so Simon, what do you think? Why do they work well? What are they adding in terms of value?

Simon Alexander They work well because the whole process is looking across the whole system. So it's looking across how multi-agency responses. So as Paul said, you know, we are looking at how the police work together with children's Social Care, with probation, with health, and how those organisations collaborate, to understand, assess and make decisions about their response for those children who are at risk and also their families.

Cait Mellow Okay, so, so...from the CQC's point of view, what do you think, Lucy, about how important it is that we look at health and education and the sort of all the sort of different aspects of children's lives?

Lucy Harte Yeah, thanks. There's no other there's no other inspection activity that looks at it, looks at it collectively and looks at it all together. So we consider how as a multi-agency partnership, those risks are identified and shared and understood. And we know from some of the complexities that we've seen through 10 years of delivering the JTAIs that that's critically important and adds significant value in terms of understanding elements like information sharing, assessment, ut also a cross-sector and multi-agency element of assessment because we know that these things don't happen in isolation. So the value of having the inspectorates work together and understand that together and be on site together, is significantly different and important.

Cait Mellow And Helen, what do you think about it? Are you learning from each other in this process?

Helen Davies We absolutely are. So we inspect on our usual inspections, probation services, adult services and children's youth justice services. So for us, it's really important to work together with inspectorates who inspect children's services, who inspect health. Because the probation service, for example, cannot manage children's safeguarding and risks to the public alone. They need to be able to do that with the other agencies. So for us, they give a really clear, joined up picture of what's really happening locally. And most importantly, they highlight issues quickly because we've got, for example, a HMI probation inspector on site at the same time as a HMI CFRS inspector looking at policing. And so if we find issues with information sharing, and we have had examples where we've been able to highlight

those issues right away and they've been put right within that week, which is very different to the experience when you go in as a lone inspectorate, just looking more narrowly.

Cait Mellow So I'm getting a strong sense of collaboration and information sharing and working together over these JTAIs. It sounds really, I don't want to say Avengers assemble, but I kind of, that's what I think. Is that true?

Helen Davies I think it's really powerful, to be honest, when we're all out there together. So absolutely, and it's that opportunity to raise issues quickly and have impact directly on practice there and then, but also in the longer term. So leaving people with action plans that require them to work together, for example, to improve systems. So it's getting it at both those levels that's a real benefit.

Cait Mellow So we're not just saying, this looks great, this needs more work. We're sort of suggesting ways in which they can perhaps collaborate more or things that they need to highlight. Is that true?

Lucy Harte Yeah, I think, thanks Cait. I think one of the powerful elements of, or the most powerful elements of the JTAI is the case tracking methodology as well that sits in the thematic JTAIs and the power that that has to bring not only the inspectorates together during the JTAI, but also bring together the inspectorates and the local area partnership. There's a real sense of everybody working together through that methodology because we, it's very difficult to challenge children, young people's and families' experiences of those multi-agency working and how people are collaborating and assessing and information sharing. I think that is a really significant and valued element of the JTAI and creates an element of a shared language, a shared understanding. There's a real time review of those experiences and how that's informing the partnership working across those partners that we've already highlighted and described. And I think that that's really key to the JTAIs and where we are now is as 10 years on, especially in thinking about some of the significant reforms that we're heading into as well. So yeah, I think that that case tracking element is critical.

Paul DInverno Yeah, we've gone on from that, what Lucy just said. We've worked hard to ensure that as inspectorates, we have a very joined up approach to inspection and therefore we're able to have a multi-agency lens in terms of how we evaluate a local area and that really supports practice at a multi-agency level, as well as supporting improvements in strategic working at a multi-agency level as well. And as we know, no agency by itself can protect children. So it's that important message about how important it is for agencies and professionals to work together. And that gives you, as Lucy was saying, that holistic view of the child's experience as well, which is really important.

Simon Alexander I think the other thing as well, just picking up on what Paul and Lucy said is, is we have the opportunity to speak to children and often their families as part of that case tracking. And that really brings to life and allows those people to have a voice as part of that inspection. I think that's really important to help the inspectors as well as the organisations that we're inspecting to understand what the reality is of their experiences and the outcomes of when agencies become involved to try and support and help them.

Cait Mellow We're talking about reforms. I mean, are these publications used across government to inform, perhaps more broadly?

Paul DInverno So what we do in quite a number of the themes is that we have a roundtable where we invite all the government departments and all the agencies so that we present our findings, the areas where there are strengths and improvements and the areas where further improvement is needed to influence government policy and practice and the practice of agencies as well. And so it's a collaborative approach to what we've learned and but importantly, what happens next in terms of taking that learning forward. And we've got probably quite a lot of examples about how we've influenced practice or multi-agency working positively at both a local and a national level.

Cait Mellow Yeah, I was going to ask, do you come back after the JTAI report has been published in a period of time later to see if the, what the impact was?

Paul DInverno I mean, one important part of the process is that after each joint targeted area inspection, the local partnership, the agencies come together to produce an action plan, a multi-agency action plan, that sets out how they're going to respond to the areas that we've identified that need improvement. And that is a really powerful vehicle in terms of driving improvement forward. And we've spoken to quite a lot of local partnerships about how JTAIs have helped them support their improvement journey. And we all do our individual inspections and we can see some of those improvements from JTAIs having happened through the lens of our individual agency inspections.

Helen Davies: We found it really helpful to be able to use what we find in JTAI to then help inform the way we inspect even as well. So for example, on the JTAI, we do that case tracking, looking at cases as multi-agencies. We've now introduced that to our youth justice service inspections, because youth justice services are multi-agency teams. So that's a direct example of something we've learned on JTAI now happening locally in over 100, it will be, youth justice services. And another great example is on our serious youth violence inspection, we added an element of looking at places and spaces. So recognising that the issues don't always happen in the home or they could be happening in, for example, a precinct. And we've introduced an element of that to our programmes as well, looking at places and spaces. So not only are we able to have the benefits while we're there, but we're able to pull them through to our inspection programmes and take the best of JTAI, what's worked really well and pinched it and we're using it.

Cait Mellow That sounds brilliant. Brilliant.

Lucy Harte Yeah, yeah, we've had the same experiences in CQC as well in terms of considering how we can use that methodology across some of our other work and particularly in thinking about some of the work that we delivered during COVID as well and how we use that case tracking for our provider collaboration reviews, and that was understanding particular themes. And there's, I think there's some clear value about how the case tracking can support the understanding of pathways and that interaction between different, different, either different services or different

points in a service for somebody who's accessing accessing either one service or many services together. There is there is a really clear value in in case tracking and what that what that brings to the voice of people within an inspection process.

Cait Mellow That's brilliant. So what's next for the JTAI?

Paul DInverno Yeah, it might just be worth reflecting back about the process that we have. So every year we undertake a different theme and we look at six local areas in that theme and we write a national overview report, as we're saying, and trying to disseminate those findings.

Cait Mellow What sort of, what sort of, what might be a theme?

Paul DInverno So, building up to what happens next in the JTAI, our next theme is the multi-agency response to younger children living with neglect and how we arrive at these themes is that we engage with stakeholders and our principle is that we try and evaluate a theme, an area of practice where we think that we can add the most value both locally to the local partnership and nationally in terms of supporting improvement. And that's how we arrived at that particular theme. But we've done lots of different themes where we've written overview reports to try and support improvements in practice. And obviously we will be amending our methodologies and framework to take account of reforms and changes that are happening throughout the multi-agency space that we work within, but specifically we will be looking at the Social Care reforms and Social Care reforms have a really strong focus on multi-agency working, which fits very well with the contribution that the JTAIs make.

Lucy Harte I think as well, if I can add to it, that there is value, isn't there, in having had the JTAI model for 10 years now. We've seen some significant changes over those 10 years and we've had the opportunity to be able to revisit some of those themes. So in our thematic JTAIs, we've done 2 thematic J ties looking at the multi-agency partnership response to children who are victims of domestic abuse. And in that time, we've had significant legislative change in terms of how children are recognised as victims through the Domestic Abuse Act. So I think we've got examples and ways in which we can use the JTAIs in amongst a significantly kind of fluid and changing national landscape and potentially significant legislative changes.

how we can use the JTAIs and what that draws out from a multi-agency perspective to really reflect some of the impacts of the multi-agency practice.

Cait Mellow It sounds like our work is a really powerful ally for children and families across the country, which is amazing. Anybody else want to say something they didn't get to say at this point?

Simon Alexander Just one point I'd just like to raise is that over the 10 years, I think the process has really developed between the inspectorates and the inspected organisations. It's much more collaborative now. It is seen as an opportunity to learn and understand where you've got effective practice and where there are areas of development. And actually the process supports those organisations in having those discussions and developing. So the relationship has really matured over that 10 year period and is less seen as like being done to and inspected, which nobody really likes, but from a practitioner to a senior manager or executive point of view, it really is seen as an opportunity for a a sense check of where they are and reassurance, but also value in areas that need further discussions and development.

Lucy Harte Yeah. I think as well there's another unintended consequence of JTAIs as well in terms of the inspectorates being together on site. So we've spoken about how some of the JTAI methodology has influenced some of our single agency methodology, but there's also an element of the inspectorates becoming familiar with each other's independent and single agency roles and the awareness of what happens beyond a JTAI, what what the what the inspectorates are seeing and hearing and findings through their single agency activity. And so understanding that shared role within within the kind of wider inspection footprint as well. I think there's a significant opportunity and benefit that we get from being together on site. So building on Simon's point as well about being together and understanding how each other work and how we kind of add value, yes, in the JTAI space, but those connexions outside of the outside of the JTAI as well, they're really valuable.

Helen Davies: Absolutely agree. And just my final word, I suppose it's been great to be involved for these 10 years, but we've also been able to call on each other outside of the JTAI inspection. So for example, while doing a probation inspection, if we've got something we want to cheque out with policing colleagues at HMICFRS, then we can do that. And again, it can lead to immediate action. So it really does have benefits that extend that one week on site.

Fantastic. So thank you so much to Helen, Lucy, Simon and Paul. I'm now joined by a couple of colleagues from Norfolk County Council, Sarah Jones, Director of Safeguarding Partnerships and Opportunity, and Tanya Fulcher, Safeguarding Practice and Assurance. We're talking about the JTAI. What was your experience of that like?

Sarah Jones

So from a Norfolk perspective, It was a really positive, rich experience, not just for the local authority, but for the partnership as well. On a number of levels, we've been on quite a significant improvement journey in Norfolk and when I first started there, a lot of the agencies in Norfolk were quite siloed in their approach. Everybody was looking down as opposed to out. And we made quite a shift as a partnership a number of years ago to start working more collaboratively, seeing children at the heart and the centre of what we do, coming together around a shared ambition. So actually a framework such as the JTAI really lent itself in Norfolk to how we like to work. The JTAI in particular, because there's quite a robust framework that sits behind something like a joint targeted area inspection, it really gave us the tools we needed to really assess what our individual practice was like for children and young people, particularly in the domestic abuse context. But it also then enabled us to look at what was our joined up and collective response in this space and what was our collective impact, but also what our collective improvements needed to be in this space. And I think it's true to say while a lot of work was happening across the partnership linked to domestic abuse and the fact that this particular JTAI was focused on children as victims and particularly children in that 0 to 7 space. It really, really made us think about our sort of collective practice and whether there was more that could be done. In Norfolk, I think we really model partnership working as senior leaders. So whether that's the constabulary, whether that's health, whether that's our education partners, the voluntary sector are very much a key partner around the table. I think we model that behaviour and that joined up working for our practitioners and staff. So this wasn't something new for Norfolk. This wasn't something that we were made to do. It didn't feel different and I think that really helped partners and particularly practitioners on the workforce. This wasn't something to be worried about. This was everyday practice that this was how we work. In terms of the way in which the JTAI is structured, it is hard work, you know, pulling together all of our multi-agency information, multi-agency audits, all the different policies and procedures that we collectively had. I wouldn't want to say it was an easy task for the partnership.

Paul DInverno

It's still quite a challenging inspection to go through, but in some ways you were ready for it.

Sarah Jones

I think we were very much ready for a JTAI in Norfolk and actually because we'd got into the spirit of being a learning partnership very regularly every time a joint targeted area inspection theme would come about. So there'd been one just before on serious youth violence for example. I know this particular one was on domestic abuse. There's been others on neglect. Actually, we were able to use the framework as that sort of learning exercise and benchmarking for ourselves across the safeguarding partnership to really sort of test our individual and collective practice. And I think because of the relationships that we've invested in Norfolk with each other at a strategic level and operational level, it was a safe space to be vulnerable as well. So this is a really complex area. There are real children and families right at the end of it. Nothing is ever perfect sadly. So being able to have a space where we say actually, our collection of the voice of the child and our analysis, for example, may need to be better or the way in which we are sharing information at an earlier point needs to be more effective. That felt OK and safe to be able to be having those sort of honest conversations together. The honest reflection and in my experience of improvement, unless you're in that space where you can be vulnerable with each other as partners, as leaders, things do not improve and things do not get better for children. So one must be brave in order to make a difference. And I think in Norfolk during this particular experience, everybody was brave and willing to be vulnerable.

Tanya Fulcher

Not only come, you know, highlight the really positive work, but actually to be able to say amongst ourselves, actually, this is really good, but we could be better at this, working in collaboration internally and externally. So even at that practitioner level, being able to highlight those areas of practice, both really positive, but actually also identify some of those areas that we'd like to strengthen. So all in all, it was a massively positive experience.

Cait Mellow

And Tanya, who are some of those agencies that you were working with there?

Tanya Fulcher

Across in the probation service, some of our health visiting teams, health in general, GPs, safeguarding. So there were many partners and relationships, some of which were already formed because obviously children's services form, you know, working relationships across all of the partners. But I think it really bonded and cemented some of those relationships. You know, they got to talk to people that maybe they hadn't before. I know there was examples of, you know, new health visitors that had come into post and we were able to form those relationships early on. So from that perspective, excellent, really good for practice.

Sarah Jones

I guess for me in terms of improvements, really learning together about what improved identification and support for children at risk really looks like on a practice level. Another learning point I guess for us was around the need for greater access to specialist domestic abuse expertise. There was a lot of expertise across the system but I don't think necessarily all of our teams were accessing that in the right way. It was recognised during the JTAI that we had a robust workforce development approach across the partnership, but one of the things we learned was actually even though a lot of practitioners across the partnerships were being trained in terms of recognising domestic abuse interventions, what impact was that training actually having on their practice? And when we looked at that together as a partnership, we could see all this learning that had taken place, but we couldn't always see it in the case file when we were looking at what support had been given to the children. Not always were practitioners then taking what they'd learned enough for us to be able to see that in that direct practice. And I think another benefit for me was around a shared language. So depending on which agency you speak to, whether it be the police, you know, the local authority, health, just the way in which we understood domestic abuse and talking about that or the way in which each of us when we say risk, what do we actually mean by that? When we talk about cumulative harm actually from a police perspective to a children's services perspective, that could feel and look quite different. And even down to voices of the child, whether you were talking to a social worker, a health visitor or frontline police officer, voice of the child again meant different things. And for some it was just collecting the voice of the child in the there and there and then where as opposed to thinking about the voice of the child and analysing, you know, what impact could cumulative harm have meant for that individual child over a period of time. So that. It sounds simple, that shared language, but actually when you got into the depth of it about what each of those terms meant for us as different agencies, that was incredibly useful for our learning.

Tanya Fulcher

And I would say that now, as a partnership, we're so much better at recognising, children as victims of domestic abuse in their own right. Their views are being captured. We can see direct work with children and understanding of that lived experience. The father-inclusive practice again is non-negotiable now for children's services in Norfolk, which means that all of our audit activity there, if it's a non-negotiable that we constantly revisit that to make sure that fathers are included in that and that goes obviously for perpetrators as well.

Sarah Jones

One of the things I often get on a soapbox about is the lack of join up nationally across government departments when it comes to children. So to have an inspection that includes the inspectorates that reflect a lot of the departments come together with a shared vision and a shared articulation of risk and true outcomes for children and come to work with us locally to talk about, ‘So what does this mean?’ Was incredibly valuable that that that in itself? I think there is a lot of learning nationally for how the the joint target area inspection actually works because the benefits are enormous.

Tanya Fulcher

And there was some learning as well around, and I might be going off piste here, but sometimes practice was more variable, say for unborn babies and infants. So, working alongside our health visitor colleagues, for example, in health, hugely important to actually understand how. How do we capture the voice, for example, of children? How does that child remain central in that investigation or in that piece of work? And how do we actually gather that information from a non-verbal child? What do we need to capture? How do we work with our health colleagues? How do we come together on that to improve practice?

Sarah Jones

The other bit I would add to that is as a partnership, we very regularly do multi-agency audits together. That's quite standard practice. But what the JTAI gave us was the framework to be more professionally curious in that space. I would say some of our previous multi-agency audits, particularly in the domestic abuse space, were quite light touch. They were quite broad where this really sort of made us think about children as victims, shared practice, cumulative harm, to be much more professionally curious then in our audit. We've been redoing those multi-agency audits every six months since, so it's given us a clear benchmark to assess our practice together.

Paul DInverno

Part of the process is obviously at the end of the inspection when you've received our report and had time to reflect is to develop a multi-agency action plan.

Sarah Jones

So we produced a composite improvement action plan, I think within, I think we actually started it during the JTAIs, we were picking up areas. But certainly in the weeks following, because it gives you some structure, it gives you some structure to come back to, it gives you something as a partnership to keep an eye on, monitor yourselves. Otherwise you get to the end of an inspection, you think, right, okay, that's done, what's next? And you can, it's quite easy to forget about the learning and forget about the things that need to be done. We also as a partnership in Norfolk had a leadership exchange event where the leaders who were part of the JTAI brought together our teams, our practitioners to share our reflections, our learning, what was next. Because we thought we had the privilege, I guess, as leaders to be able to hear that feedback direct from yourselves. Our practitioners across the system would only really be able to see the report. So we wanted that opportunity to share with them where we're really proud and recognise good practice, but also to be able to enforce the job is not done, it is never done. There are still improvements to make and this is what we're going to do. So and still now the composite action plan remains on the agenda every six months as part of our safeguarding partnership so that we don't take our eye off the ball in that space.

Tanya Fulcher

Our learning has disseminated throughout every part of the service and across partnerships and in whatever professional meetings they're in regionally or nationally, that sharing is learned and is quite often part of an agenda to share the journey that we've been on and to share good practice.

Sarah Jones

It just provides the perfect framework to make sure you are doing the right thing by children.

Cait Mellow

Thank you so much to Sarah, Tanya and Paul. And I'd like to thank you very much for listening to our podcast and join us next time.