OFSTED Quality of Care/Support Reviews

Overview

Effective quality of care and support reviews are essential to understanding how well children's social care services meet the needs of children and young people, achieve positive outcomes and identify opportunities for improvement.

For Children's Homes and Supported Accommodation providers, periodic quality reviews are an important part of regulatory compliance, management oversight and continuous service development. However, the value of these reviews depends on more than gathering information and producing reports. They should provide a meaningful evaluation of the experiences of children and young people, the quality of practice and the effectiveness of the service.

This practical live online seminar explores how to plan, undertake and use effective quality of care and support reviews within Ofsted-regulated Children's Homes and Supported Accommodation services.

Participants will consider the relevant review requirements, how to gather and analyse meaningful evidence, involve children and other stakeholders, identify patterns and trends, and translate findings into clear improvement actions.

The seminar also explores how quality reviews can become an integral part of management oversight and organisational learning, rather than a periodic administrative exercise.

Course Content

The seminar explores the purpose and requirements of quality of care and support reviews within Children's Homes and Supported Accommodation, including the different regulatory expectations that apply to each type of provision. Participants will consider how these reviews contribute to organisational accountability, management oversight, inspection readiness and continuous improvement.

Participants will examine how to structure an effective review, including identifying relevant areas for evaluation, determining appropriate sources of evidence and ensuring that information is gathered systematically throughout the review period. The session will consider how to use information from care and support records, safeguarding incidents, complaints, feedback, staff supervision, internal monitoring and other quality assurance activities.

Particular attention will be given to the difference between describing activity and evaluating its effectiveness. Participants will explore how to move beyond listing what the service has done to analysing the quality of practice, identifying patterns, assessing progress and understanding the impact of care and support on children and young people.

The seminar will also examine how children's voices, experiences and outcomes should inform quality reviews. Participants will consider approaches to gathering meaningful feedback from children, families, placing authorities, staff and other professionals, while recognising the importance of balancing different perspectives and interpreting information critically.

The session will explore how to identify strengths, areas for improvement and emerging concerns, including the importance of recognising recurring issues, evaluating previous actions and demonstrating whether changes have resulted in better practice or outcomes.

Participants will also consider how review findings should be translated into clear, achievable improvement actions, with identified responsibilities, timescales and arrangements for monitoring progress. The relationship between quality reviews, wider organisational development plans and ongoing management oversight will be explored.

Throughout the seminar, emphasis will be placed on producing reviews that are analytical, evidence-informed and useful to the organisation, while meeting the relevant regulatory requirements for Children's Homes and Supported Accommodation.

Practice Application

Participants will work through realistic examples of quality of care and support review information from Children's Homes and Supported Accommodation settings.

The exercises will explore how to identify relevant evidence, interpret information, recognise patterns and move from descriptive reporting towards meaningful evaluation.

Participants will consider examples of review findings that lack analysis, contain unsupported conclusions or fail to demonstrate the impact of care and support. They will explore how these can be strengthened through better evidence, professional judgement and clearer evaluation.

The session will also examine how to develop improvement actions from review findings, including how to establish meaningful objectives, assign responsibilities and evaluate whether changes have achieved the intended outcomes.

Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own quality review processes and identify practical improvements to evidence gathering, analysis, reporting and management oversight.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the seminar, participants will be able to:

• Understand the purpose and regulatory requirements of quality of care and support reviews in Children's Homes and Supported Accommodation.

• Recognise the differences between the review arrangements applicable to each type of provision.

• Identify and organise relevant evidence to support meaningful quality reviews.

• Move beyond descriptive reporting towards analytical and evaluative review processes.

• Incorporate children's experiences, views and outcomes into quality evaluation.

• Identify patterns, trends, strengths and areas requiring improvement.

• Develop clear, achievable and measurable improvement actions from review findings.

• Understand how quality reviews contribute to management oversight, organisational learning and continuous improvement.

Intended Audience

This seminar is suitable for professionals responsible for undertaking, contributing to or overseeing quality of care and support reviews within Ofsted-regulated children's social care services.

It is particularly relevant for Registered Managers, Registered Service Managers, Responsible Individuals, Nominated Individuals, Deputy Managers, Operational Managers, Service Managers, Quality Assurance Officers, Compliance Managers and senior leaders.

The seminar is designed for professionals working in Children's Homes and Supported Accommodation services who wish to strengthen their review processes, improve the quality of evaluation and ensure that findings contribute to meaningful service improvement.

Course Facilitator

Miguel Valerio is a registered social worker with over 20 years of experience in social care, including extensive experience in the management, development and regulatory oversight of Children's Homes and Supported Accommodation services in England.

His professional background includes Registered Service Manager, Operational Manager and Responsible Individual roles, alongside supporting providers with Ofsted registration, inspection preparation, quality assurance, compliance and service improvement.

Through Social Care Skills, Miguel works with providers and management teams to strengthen regulatory understanding, develop effective quality assurance and oversight arrangements, and translate regulatory expectations into practical approaches that improve service quality and outcomes for children and young people.

His training combines operational experience, regulatory knowledge and practical examples drawn from children's social care settings.