Children's Quality Assurance and Review Team

The Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) service has a budget of £532,000 per year, the majority of this sum is spent on staff salaries, however there is a significant sum spent on travel expenses as IRO’s have to travel to where children are placed in order to undertake their reviews.

 

The service has nine full time staff, plus a Service Manager, Business Support Manager and two Business Support Staff.  The service is physically located in Redvers House, Union Street, Sheffield. 

 

The Children’s Quality Assurance and Review Team has two important performance indicators and targets that they aim to meet.

 

The first concerns undertaking the reviews of children according to fixed timescales, these are the minimum requirements and all children who are looked after should have their reviews undertaken within 28 days, when they are first accommodated, then at 91 days and after this at intervals of 183 days.  Reviews need to take place between these periods if a significant change takes place.

 

The second concerns children’s participation in their reviews, children who have been looked after for more than four weeks and are above the age of four years need to make their wishes and feelings known in their review.  This can be done in a variety of means and allows the members of the review to make decisions in the knowledge of what the child thinks is important. 

 

These two indicators are monitored on a monthly basis and the monthly service performance is recorded in the charts in the document below.

 

The drop in August 2007 was as a result of recording difficulties, these were successfully resolved and September 2007 saw a 2.2% rise.

 

The performance of CQART is very close to the required level and reflects a considerable effort from all involved.  The need is to improve the quality of participation from young people, by making more appropriate to them the ways in which they communicate their views.