Improvement action and evaluation of impact

Questions to consider for:

• Open Those ultimately accountable; Safeguarding Adult Board members and Chair

  1. Have you provided clear leadership about the need for an open and mutually challenging discussion about what is said in the report about the effectiveness of safeguarding arrangements and practice, or progress against earlier learning, and what needs to be done to address systemic risks identified or progress improvement work?
  2. What part might the person and family subject of this SAR, and people with relevant lived experience and/or who draw on services more widely, have in this process of deciding actions and evaluation planning?
  3. How can you bolster partners toward suitably ambitious goals?
  4. Is specialist support or facilitation needed in the effort to align motivations and think beyond conventional responses and partnership arrangements?
  5. Have discussions considered which findings may NOT be within the gift of partners locally to address, but instead need to be taken to national, regional or other forums for consideration of how best to address them?
  6. Are proposed actions adequately integrated, where appropriate, into on-going or planned workstreams / priority areas of the SAB and/or partner agencies, regional or national bodies?
  7. Are you assured that relevant agencies and sectors have the necessary mechanisms to link the SAR findings into improvement work as agreed and evaluation of impact and if not, what sources of support are available?
  8. Has a logic model or similar technique been used to articulate to the SAB the intended impact and outcomes of proposed actions, for whom, in what timescales and by what mechanisms?
  9. Are SAB expectations clear about plans for longer-term monitoring of improvement actions and follow up to evaluate impact?
  10. Is there agreement about whether follow-up on impact best occurs locally or at a regional or sub-regional level?
  11. Does reporting in the Board’s Annual Report comply with statutory requirements and provide genuine transparency and accountability about whether improvement actions have taken place and whether they have made any difference?

• Open Those with delegated responsibility; the SAR subgroup or similar

  1. Do the proposed responses by agencies and the SAB genuinely tackle the systemic risks identified by the SAR and at the right levels of a system hierarchy, and avoid assuming that disseminating SAR outputs to operational staff is adequate?
  2. Are you using a model for change management or 'organisational development' to help think wider than changes to procedures and training for staff?
  3. Have you considered who is best placed to decide what an effective response to each of the findings would be, and how to engage them in these discussions?
  4. Have any ‘quick wins’ been identified, and distinguished from causal factors and conditions that are less straightforward to address?
  5. Is there a clear plan of how the SAB will monitor whether actions are on track?
  6. Does the plan to evaluate impact match the theory of change for each finding?
  7. Will a Task and Finish Group be needed to manage and monitor progress, particularly if there are numerous points to the Plan and if several organisations are involved and responsible for different aspects.

• Open Those providing practical support; SAB Business Managers/Unit

  1. Can you help with making accessible intelligence from other sources that is relevant to findings in the report?
  2. Has a clear, considered process been planned, to avoid a last-minute rush to agree responses?
  3. Are any key players missing from this process and how can they best be engaged?
  4. If developing an action plan is being left to you to create in isolation, have you escalated the issue?