The formal consultation into a new overarching framework for the education, social and healthcare provision for children and young people from nought to 19 was announced by Ofsted on Monday.
The proposals have been devised by the ten inpectorates and commissions that inspect settings and services for children and young people.
Chief inspector of schools David Bell said, 'This approach to inspection, assessment and review will ensure all the commissions and inspectorates work together in a consistent way. Judgements in reviews are to be made on the same criteria by specially trained inspectors and will lead to a single published report.'
The main proposals are:
* From September 2005 all local authority children's services will have a joint area review and report published every three years. Judgements will be made on how well services reflect the needs of children in the area and recommendations made for improvement.
* The process will be integrated and conducted alongside the Audit Commission's corporate assessment of councils to streamline inspection and reduce the burdens on councils.
* Multidisciplinary teams of inspectors will look at education, care, health and youth justice and also cover service aspects such as family support and provisions made for vulnerable children.
* Children and young people will be involved in the process.
The consultation, seeking responses to the Framework for Inspection of Children's Services and three other related documents, can be downloaded at www.ofsted.gov.uk/everychildconsultation.
* The Education Bill published last week enables changes to the new inspection framework for early years, including no-notice inspections for nurseries, to be put into practice. It also includes a guarantee of three-year budgets for schools.
