The response of the Association of Directors of Children’s
Services to the consultation on multi-agency inspections of child protection is
welcome.
It shows how once the bureaucratic approaches of the various
inspectorates to quality in child protection services become embedded (to use an Ofstedism) layer
upon layer of complexity gets laid down to the point where it is hard to
remember what the purpose of the exercise was.
These intricate and involved multi-agency inspection arrangements
will not result in increased quality or greater safety. All they will result in
is intricate and involved inspections and stacks of impenetrable inspection
reports full of silly buzzwords – like ‘embedded’, ‘robust’ etc. etc.
We can go on and on paying for increasingly complex, costly and
un-productive inspections of child protection, without any clear indication of
what they will achieve. Or we could use the money to fund improvements in
services and develop continuous improvement approaches, which would be much
more likely to result in safer and higher quality services that are better at
meeting the needs of vulnerable children.
You would think that was a ‘no-brainer’ but the powerful
inspectorate lobby (with all those inspectors and bureaucrats in well paid jobs)
is a significant reactionary force which at present seems to have the sector by
the throat.
