Are you and your partners ready for Comprehensive Area Assessment?
Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) framework will be ‘alive and kicking’ from 2009. Are you ready for your assessment? Are your partners ready for it?
Do you have joint information sharing and performance management systems in place that demonstrate you are collectively making a difference?
What is CAA?
CAA is the first holistic independent assessment of the prospects of an area and the quality of life for people living there. It will put the experience of the citizens – people who use services and the local taxpayers – at the centre of the assessment framework. It will have a particular focus on those whose circumstances make them vulnerable. Reducing inequalities and discriminatory outcomes for all members of the community is central to CAA.
Talk to us...
Our consultants have been on many sides of inspection – receiving it as part of organisations being inspected, supporting organisations through it as consultants and also being the inspector on behalf of the Audit Commission during their past inspector careers.
Our experts in performance management have worked at both at a strategic and operational level.
You may want to commission this project jointly with your key partners, or test out your own frameworks to see if they meet the challenge.
Ring the Account Management Team now for an informal discussion 01823 323239 or email am@covalentsoftware.com
This focus on outcomes means that the assessment will concentrate on how councils, health bodies, police forces, fire and rescue authorities and other organisations, including the housing and voluntary sectors work together to make a difference in the local community.
So what does this mean in practice?
The Audit Commission will assess the area, based on the new National Indicator set, look at performance against the targets set in partnership within the Local Area Agreement (LAA), your local priorities and your customer satisfaction results. Value for money will also be assessed through a Use of Resources and Managing Performance Assessment.
Shared information, joint target setting, pooled resources (people and money), shared use of assets, and co-ordinated performance reporting are just some of the practices that should be seen under CAA.
Covalent, in partnership with YCChange Consultants, can provide you with the support you need for all your CAA preparations.
How we can support your CAA preparations
We can carry out a mock CAA inspection based on current methodology. Key areas of inspection are:
- Local priority setting to express community needs and aspirations
- Monitor your high level outcomes as well as your individual contributions
- Show the ‘golden thread’ throughout your key partner organisations (e.g. council, health, police) by aligning and reporting on your key corporate and business plan targets. Individual accountability is integral to the system
Our Covalent performance management system can provide you with the mechanism for joint intelligence gathering, performance monitoring, reporting and management of your LAA, national and local partnership indicators:
- Align your plans to deliver the joint outcomes for the community
- Delivering outcomes and improvements
- Improvement planning and capacity to deliver
Some organisations are struggling with breaking down the LAA targets into contributions from a range of organisations –either as a result of ‘top down’ target setting; no historic data given new indicator set; or lack of robust local data to provide a ‘bottom up’ target setting approach.
- We can work with you and your partners to develop a sound set of individual targets at local levels
- We can assess your readiness for CAA in relation to all your corporate frameworks –finance, risk, communications, engagement, community leadership and decision making.
- We will work within your Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) framework to identify how you and your partners are contributing to improving the quality of life for your communities
Benefits
- Your CAA Inspection. You will be prepared for your CAA inspection
- Your Corporate Frameworks. Corporate Frameworks will be aligned, evidencing that you are working towards the same, complimentary local issues
- Your Targets. Shared targets will be robust. You will be able to identify how your individual targets contribute to the high level strategic targets
- Your Performance Management System. Should you choose to do so, you could share the same Performance Management system – aligned with the hierarchy of structures which will ensure robust and transparent management of performanceYour decision-making process is much more robust as decisions are formulated on current and accurate data
- Your Staff. Your staff will understand how they contribute to the whole partnership agenda
- Your Achievements. You will have clear evidence of how your partnership working makes a real difference
Deliverables
| Mock inspection. We will carry out a mock inspection based on the CAAmethodology with you and your partners. |
'Golden thread'. We will start with the LAA and ensure that your Corporate and Business Plans provide the ‘golden thread’. |
Service delivery. Critique of you and your partners’ integration of risk, performance and finance in order to jointly deliver services. |
| Data recommendations. Identification of what locality data you and partners have access to plus recommendations for data-sharing and joint analysis. |
Target setting process. Analysis of how your overall and individual targets have been set and assessment of the robustness of this process. |
Data quality. We will check out your data quality and your collection of data in line with the new National Indicator definitions. |
The implementation process was very straightforward, and users found the system particularly easy in practice because Covalent uses public sector terminology and is not commercially-oriented.