Halton Borough Council’s Children and Young People services have achieved outstanding results in a rigorous assessment of its performance by the independent Audit Commission and OFSTED.

Corporate Assessment is one element of the Audit Commission's overall appraisal of how local authorities perform. It looks at how the Council works with its communities, delivers priorities alongside its partners, and ensures continuous improvements across the range of Council activities.  Councils are rated from one 1 to 4 in a number of categories - Halton achieved the overall score of 4 and was judged to be 'performing strongly'.   

The Audit Commission found that the Council’s strong leadership, partnership working, and its good track record in delivering major regeneration projects, is addressing the challenges facing the borough.  The report states that the Council engages well with service users and the community in general, and has ‘championed’ the need to close the gap between Halton as a whole and its most deprived neighbourhoods, through its Neighbourhood Management programme.  The Council offers value for money, spending is focussed on meeting priorities – which have been identified through consultation with residents – and the Council has a good record in attracting external funding.  Initiatives are in place to improve the borough’s health issues and some of these are starting to achieve good results.

Carried out alongside this is the Joint Area Review - which assesses the Council’s achievements in children and young people’s services, plus those provide by a range of partner organisations, including health services.  JAR inspectors state that the partnership approach to improving outcomes for children and young people was key to Halton’s success.

They comment on the high quality of staff they encountered and were impressed with their calm, committed approach. 

The main findings include:

• Safeguarding children in Halton is outstanding, with sustained high performance, including child protection, underpinned by very strong joint working, robust policies and procedures.
• Local services for looked after children are good – children live in safe, stable placements and receive good care. 
•  The Council and its partners have made rapid progress over the last three years in developing a well-planned inclusion strategy for children and young people with earning difficulties and/or disabilities.
• The local authority and its partners are very responsive to young people’s views and opinions.
• Service management is good, with outstanding capacity to drive further improvement. Highly effective leadership provides clear direction.