Introduction
CYPS and the Bristol Children and Young People’s Partnership have developed a performance review process which links the annual update of the Children and Young People’s Plan and service delivery planning to a quarterly review of risks and highlights in performance. This enables CYPS Programme Directors, elected members and members of the Children and Young People’s Partnership Board and work stream groups to review and challenge performance in a more timely way, using both hard data (performance indicators) and soft information (narrative and analyses of performance). The end products of these quarterly reviews are a suite of report cards against each of the Every Child Matters themes, plus one for organisational effectiveness and a gradual build up of information to inform the Annual Performance Assessment of Children and Young People’s Services and other inspections.
Performance Review Process
The performance review cycle is split into five constituent parts:
- The Children and Young People’s Plan is reviewed and updated on an annual basis as part of the OFSTED Annual Performance Assessment process. The three workstream groups of the Children and Young People’s Partnership will also refresh their action plans on an annual basis.
- To ensure more regular ‘stocktakes’ and challenges of performance against key milestones and targets, there are now quarterly reports on risks and highlights in performance completed by CYPS Programme Directors. The aim is for the Children and Young People’s Partnership to follows the same model in the future.
- The end ‘products’ from this process are a suite of ‘Quarterly Report Cards’, which contain graphs illustrating Bristol Children and Young People’s Partnership performance against core cities, statistical neighbours and the national average across a range of performance indicators, combined with an analysis by CYPS Programme Directors providing an overview of factors influencing performance and identifying actions to further improve performance. As of April 2008, report cards will be re-designed so as to be aligned with the updated Children & Young People’s Plan and the new National Performance Framework.
- Each quarter, the Executive Board of the Children and Young People’s Partnership, the Partnership’s three workstream groups, the Council’s Corporate Children’s Services Group (CCSG), the Executive Member for Children and Young People and the Children’s Services Scrutiny Commission receive the report cards and meetings are structures to facilitate challenges on key issues of underperformance and to celebrate performance highlights.
- More work is needed on evaluating the longer-terms impact of interventions on improving outcomes. A key element of this is engaging with service users and asking them whether services have had a positive impact on behaviours, successes, prospects and opportunities. A key component of the updated Children and Young People’s Plan is to support the improved evaluation of impacts upon the lives of children, young people, their parents and carers.
3. Additional Key Planning and Performance Review Processes Throughout the Year
