Flippin’ Eck - We’re Being Inspected!
It’s the call no one wants to take. But, actually, you do. You’ve been preparing and
worrying, practising and worrying, printing documents and worrying, so when that lead
inspector finally calls the director to say that your inspection starts tomorrow, there is a
short feeling of relief because your time has come, followed by the ‘oh my goodness we’re
being inspected’ moment.
The following is hopefully a light hearted but helpful look at the inspection process, because
we too were preparing and worrying and now that we’ve been inspected, we’d like to share
our experiences.
Week 1
Day 1 – The Call
Our director had decided that we would support him by waiting with him (he called this
‘active waiting’, we called it ‘moral support’) on those magical days marked in the calendar
as potential inspection start days. We waited and waited, 9.30am came and went, (the time
when we thought calls had to be made by) and we concluded that this time, we weren’t one
of the chosen few, so we all departed to do other things.
And then they rang. Our best tip - keep calm. They aren’t coming until the next day.
In reality, it’s very difficult to keep calm as your mind races through all the different things
you need to prepare before they knock on the door at 9am on Day 2. We had a plan (thank
goodness) that listed what needed to happen on Days 1, 2 and 3 (and all the other days of
the inspection as much as we could glean from the framework and the handbook). We
dusted it off and worked our way through it.
In our inspection preparation, we had key people who took responsibility for specific tasks:
 An owner for Annex A reports
 An owner for Annex A documents
 An owner for managing the case audits and tracked cases documentation
 An owner for communicating with staff and partners
 An owner for IT and logistics
One person can’t do everything – we would advise you to spread the load.
Day 2 – They arrived!!!
An early start for us all (the pattern for every day for the next 3 weeks) – making sure we
were prepared for the day. Our meeting with the lead inspector led to the identification of
39 key lines of enquiry – areas they would be following through during their time with us.
Our decision was to have a response for all 39 – work that was undertaken by our
dedicated team working to a tight deadline. For us this was the day the Director’s PA went
into labour and gave birth to twins!!!
Day 3 – Inspection Industry Commences
What you’ll quickly realise is that being inspected creates its own little industry. You get to:
 Keep in touch with inspectors every day
 Follow up on any case or question they want a response to
 Arrange more meetings
 Provide more documents
 Provide more data
 Brief staff about the meetings they will be in
 Debrief them once the meetings have finished
 Brief your own staff each day on progress
 Plan for the next keep in touch meeting – what information you will be handing over,
what you will be pushing back on
And repeat.
Day 4 - What did they find when they knocked on our ‘front door?’
Day 4, the end of week 1, a chance for the inspection team to feedback about what they’d
found so far, a chance to identify a few more key lines of enquiry and a chance to agree
timescales for activities due in week 2. We breathed a collective sigh of relief as they left at
lunchtime and we all met to plan our time for Week 2.
Week 2
They aren’t on site - but they are at the end of the phone. Daily conversations with the lead
inspector led to the creation of the work of art that was the plan for all the meetings in
weeks 3 and 4.
As well as planning the meetings, we were busy auditing our cases, quality checking them
and sending these to the lead inspector. We created folders for each of the 12 tracked
cases. We made sure our ducks were in a row for all the key lines of enquiry. We nurtured
staff that were to meet with inspectors. We tidied up case files. We arranged a small
number of focus groups with young people and parents. Twiddling your thumbs was not an
option.
The inspectors may not be physically with you, but they are waiting in the wings for Monday
of week 3.
Weeks 3 and 4 - Day to day when they are here
In the words of Iron Maiden ‘Run to the hills. Run for your life.’ (we know you’re singing it in
your head).
There is no escape from the day to day eclectic mix of activity that happens during
inspection. One colleague compared it to the exercise you are asked to do on a
management development course. As a team you are given your brief (the inspection
framework) and you make a plan and everyone knows what is supposed to happen and
when. Your day starts and you feel (relatively) in control. The distractions come thick and
fast: people come in; people want to change things; people want to meet with you;
someone requests some additional information; you are asked to proof read a document,
take an inspector to an area office, print them an updated timetable and print a copy of
something you’ve already given them. In the end, your original task is the last one that
receives any attention.
It’s like this – but worse. And you do get through it.
 Don’t flap
 Don’t get flummoxed
 Smile and say ‘I’ll see what I can do’
Remember that the inspectors are everywhere. Just because you’ve found them a room for
the duration of their visit, doesn’t mean they will stay in it. They pop up at 7.00am and at
5pm wanting another meeting or more information or both. Although you can’t ask them all
to wear the same outfit for easy identification at 50 paces, we looked around carefully
before we said anything controversial – because they might have been right behind us.
Meetings in weeks 3 and 4
We started to plan and arrange the meetings for weeks 3 and 4 on the day the inspection
started. And we were still arranging them the day before they finalised their
recommendations as they thought of additional meetings they wanted to have.
In total we had:
 18 meetings with social workers for each audited case
 53 meetings – each one lasting a minimum of an hour
 9 practice observations which were slotted in after all other meetings had been
arranged
The arrangement and management of these meetings is a very fluid process. Just when
you think you’ve nailed it, something changes. Our aim was that at the end of week 2,
everyone knew which meeting they had to attend, where it was and who it was with. They
were given information to help them prepare based on the topics that were to be covered in
each meeting. Most importantly they knew that the meeting date/time/venue/content might
change or be cancelled. We all needed to be incredibly flexible.
Our top tips
 Don’t be afraid to push for meetings that you want to have so you can showcase
key aspects of what you do
 When you plan your meetings with the lead inspector, make sure you know the
topics the meeting will cover
 Don’t expect all the meetings you had first planned to take place
 Expect there to be more meetings than you (and they) originally thought of
 Give the inspectors and yourselves time to draw breath in between the meetings
– they need to write up their notes; you need to debrief those who have been
met.
Requests for Additional Information
These come thick and fast from the inspection team. They can include items they’ve asked
for in addition to Annex A documents through meetings, team visits or bright ideas they had
over breakfast that morning. Include items you want to give them to showcase your work,
in particular responses to their identified key lines of enquiry, items they identified in the
keep in touch meetings and lists of data they requested.
We installed a gatekeeper. Someone who collated all the document requests, checked
which inspector asked for them, made sure they were approved to be given to the inspector
and then kept a hard and soft copy so we knew what had been handed over. Don’t let
anything go to the inspection team unless it is through the gatekeeper and make sure your
inspection team know who your gatekeeper is. In the end we submitted an additional 115
pieces of documentation; items that they requested and items we wanted them to have.
We also built a Rapid Response Team. Even though they didn’t have motorbikes and
flashing lights, they were still incredibly effective. Four great members of staff who could
pick up on issues raised in the keep in touch meetings, produce additional information as
requested, quality check what was being sent out and track which cases inspectors were
browsing through.
Our top tips
 Make sure you have really good administrative support. You’ll be printing and
photocopying and destroying many trees. Keep a copy of everything you give them.
 Requests can come in right up to the last minute.
 We were fortunate to be able to track which cases and ultimately which document
inspectors looked at on line in our case recording system. Is this something you can
do?
 Have a rapid response team and a gatekeeper
Communicating with your staff
Last time we were inspected, we didn’t make enough effort to tell our staff what was
happening. This time we were determined it would be different. We had someone who
note-took at all the ‘keep in touch’ meetings. We used these notes to brief key staff
members at the end of each day (about 25 staff) and as a prompt for generating additional
data and documents.
Our end of day meetings served three purposes; i) to catch up with staff on meetings and
progress that had happened during the day, feeding back the good and the areas for
concern; ii) to make sure everyone was aware of the meetings that were happening the
following day and iii) to keep momentum going.
Our Director decided to keep in touch with all 1,700 staff through a blog delivered by daily
email. It was welcomed by all and provided a great mechanism to keep even those in far
flung offices up to date with what the inspector’s had found, what they’d said and what they
were doing next. Not only our staff and partners it was also important to involve the leader
lead member and our Chief Executive all of whom were hugely supportive and brilliant.
Additional Hints and Tips
The following sections provide a few hints and tips on some key areas that are part of the
inspection that will hopefully help you think about the processes you have in place, work
you might like to do in preparation for being inspected and how best you can be in control of
your own inspection when it happens. With everything, how it works for you will depend on
the inspection team who come to visit and the relationship you build with them in a short
and intense period of time.
Annex A Reports – Picking those 18 Cases
Having practiced on a monthly basis running the Annex A reports, we were good to go. Our
practice runs had identified that Annex A is a really useful information set - better in many
ways than the statutory data sets (children in need census; 903 looked after children return)
and we’d already started to use it as part of our performance framework - so children with
repeat referrals had been reviewed by managers and a note put on their file. There
therefore shouldn’t have been any surprises for us in the data set and specific cases that
Ofsted sampled should have shown evidence that we had previously audited ourselves.
Make sure you do know your data.
We had already made the decision to have our entire 11 Annex A reports ready for
submission by the start of Day 2. Ofsted say you can submit some data on Day 2 and
some later, but we decided that this was too confusing and we ran the risk of forgetting to
create and send the remaining data.
Having had feedback from other authorities who have been through this new framework, we
pushed for agreeing the 18 cases to be audited and the 12 cases to be tracked on Day 2.
Ofsted were agreeable to this and by 3pm on Day 2 we had our case numbers. Be
prepared – they will pick the one case you didn’t want them to. They learn how to do this at
Ofsted Inspection School.
The lead inspector was open to sitting with us to identify the cases for auditing and tracking,
so we could move straight away to starting the audit process; notifying those social workers
and area managers that their case had been picked, and warming up our auditors.
Our top tips
 Be ready to submit ALL your Annex A reports by the start of Day 2
 Identify the 18 cases and the 12 tracked cases as soon as you can, giving you more
time to audit – if you can sit next to the lead inspector whilst they do this – great!
Annex A Document File
Well, just how many reams of A4 and A3 paper can one process get through? We’d been
building our Annex A Document File for many months – two A4 folders packed with all
Ofsted wanted that were updated monthly. All we needed to do was re check everything
that was in hard copy against the electronic copy so we could give both to the inspection
team. When we did send the information electronically, we managed to pick the day when
they weren’t receiving any incoming emails from external sources. So we had to send it
again. We kept receiving rejection messages because our files were too large (even
though when we had split them up and compressed them!) and so we had to break the files
down into even smaller files and send them again. Eventually, they were all transmitted.
Our top tips
 Make sure your documents are up to date and ready to hand over after a final check.

It really takes the stress away.
Send many small compressed messages – nothing worse than trying to work out
which files made it and which files didn’t get through Ofsted’s gateway.
Case File Audits
We’d practiced our audit process; a number of times since the new framework came out.
We knew who our auditors would be and what we were going to complete, having refined
our process and the forms we were going to use. We knew the time frame we had to work
in and we’d decided to do multi agency reviews on each case where applicable. And it
worked. Not quite like a dream – but pretty close. Our paper industry kicked in again as we
made three copies of each case (one for the inspector, one for us and one for the social
worker). We had to pull a couple of new auditors out of the magic hat as our original list
was depleted through holidays, but we coped.
Our top tips
 Make sure the social worker and their team manager is involved in the audit process
and understand what your final audit judgement is what it is
 The social workers who will be interviewed by the inspector arrive in plenty of time so
you can chat with them and arrange to debrief them afterwards.
 Although meetings were planned for ½ hour in length, many took longer
 Be prepared that inspectors may want to look at your recording system with the
social worker as they talk to them
 Inspectors may want to talk to the IRO/Independent chair and health lead (where
appropriate) for the audited cases
 Don’t forget to contact the parents of the 18 cases in case an inspector wants to talk
to them
What are our final thoughts for you?
 It is a welcome process – you will have been preparing and anticipating the visit for a
while so you will (eventually) be glad that it has arrived and ecstatic when it is over.
 After they have left, you will be very, very tired - your brain now only able to work at a
snail’s pace. It is a welcome break from the hyper state you’ve been in for three
weeks.
 Your staff will have worked wonders; updating case files, writing documents at short
notice, travelling around your authority to support staff, working late into the night,
changing their plans outside of work to tackle inspection, continuing with their day
job as much as they can. Thank them.
 Although the inspection process lasts 16 ½ working days (from the day they call to
the day they leave), they are only on site with you (taking into account their travel
time) for 8 ½ working days. There are limits to what even Ofsted inspectors (no
matter how many of them there are) can achieve in that time.
o For 1 ½ days they are meeting the social workers for the 18 cases
o They have a large team meeting in week 3 for ½ day
o For ½ day they are completing their final feedback to the director (the final
Wednesday)
o Which leaves 6 days for meetings, case tracking and visits
You won’t know what day of the week it is, what’s happening in the outside world, whether
you’ve missed an appointment you were supposed to go to, if you’ve eaten, whether you
have changed your socks, if you are wearing the same tie as yesterday.
You will know who ate the last biscuit and that they haven’t bought any more, which
sweets are on special offer at Sainsbury’s, who’s turn it is to do the tea and coffee run and
who your favourite inspector is.
Remember that life goes on, despite inspection. Our staff had children doing GCSEs, AS
and A levels; staff went on holiday and others covered; staff came back from holiday to
discover we were being inspected; our director’s personal assistant went into early labour
with twins; but above all, we continued to help and protect all of the children and their
families that we are responsible for.
June 2014