Tuesday 28 July 2009

Ofsted report for A4e North East, East Yorkshire and Humber, Programme Centres

On 26 June 2009 there was an Ofsted inspection of A4e's premises in Hull, York, Bridlington, Goole, Grimsby and Scunthorpe (it was during A4e Hull's nightmare week). The full report can be found here. As with all of A4e's inspections under the current contracts the overall grade is 3 - satisfactory. (There are 4 grades; 1, outstanding, 2, good, 3, satisfactory and 4, inadequate.) The summary says:
Key strengths
 Good development of confidence and motivation
 Good links to external organisations to provide specialist support
 Particularly effective management information system to monitor performance
 Good management of subcontractor
Key areas for improvement
 Very low progression rates into jobs
 Insufficiently individualised target-setting and action planning
 Insufficiently thorough quality arrangements
They point out the very low progression rate into jobs of 18% in 2008 / 09, while recognising that "the number of participants joining the programme has increased significantly from 203 participants in the first three months of 2008/09 to 585 in the last three months of 2008/09".
One paragraph which surprised me stated that "Procedures for safeguarding participants do not meet current government requirements. A4e currently does not have a suitable safeguarding policy and procedure. Staff have not had appropriate background checks and have not received training covering safeguarding vulnerable adults."
The report makes interesting reading for anyone who has been on an A4e programme or has worked in the sector.

10 comments:

  1. strangely they get all the same, i wonder how close they are to level 4.. of course its stacked for them.. only one is less, it would have been better if there was more grades.

    so they got 18% of 203 people? in first 3 months 2008/09, they dont mention how many they got jobs for in the 585.

    so they got 36.54 people a job in the first 3rd. Hang on.. if the ratio held up in the last 3 months that would be 105.3 people.. but i would say they wuld have less people in less time for each individual

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  2. If they try to send me back to Hull again I'm going to mention Article 3 of the Human Rights Act

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  3. The following is an edited version of an anonymous comment. Please do not post stuff which could be considered actionable:
    "I argued that the jobs are there to be filled and if A4e didnt exist the jobs would still be there and filled by the good old fashioned job vacancy boards/papers and internet. Before the inspection in Hull we had no hot water for 10 weeks, a lift with a sign saying may stick between floors and 2 urinals for 600 people that didn't flush, then a week before the inspection a team was brought in to sort it all and tell them what the inspectors would be looking for .... guess what ? toilets fixed , lift fixed. hot water fixed, free fruit in each room , plants , air fresheners ... these inspections should be without warning and random , see how many points they get then."

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  4. HI...the recent A4E Hull Ofsted report is not to be on Ofsted...just tried...hmmm...wonder why...could it be due to ongoing DWP fraud investigations

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  5. Yes it is, anon. It's on the page: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxedu_providers/list_providers/(atoz)/a/(type)/2128609280,1073741824,536870912,268435456,134217728,67108864,33554432,16777216,8388608,4194304,2097152,1048576,524288/(typename)/Learning%20and%20skills/(sort)/datesort,desc/(object_step)/10
    If you go to Ofsted's website, inspection reports, Learning and Skills, then click on A to search. The title doesn't mention Hull - it's North East Yorkshire & the Humber.

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  6. The Humber area includes Hull. It used to be called Humberside a county where Hull was a city of - unless I am mistaken.

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  7. Of course. My point was that if someone was looking for the report under Hull they wouldn't find it.

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  8. @Mercurior. I wonder if the .54 of a person gets paid as much as normal people?

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  9. the ofsted report now says ''This report is unavailable.
    '' So i wonder why this is... could it be too many people complaining about the level of service or there lack of...

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  10. It's still listed on the Ofsted site with a link but no report comes up. Strange.

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