Self-evaluation
As part of an overall approach to performance management, a major challenge for councils and their partners is to make sure that internal self-evaluation leads to improvement and complements external scrutiny.
This can be achieved if councils and their partners adopt robust self-evaluation which enables each authority to plan for, and deliver, real improvements in services, management and leadership.
The purpose of self-evaluation is to improve quality and performance as well as to focus on the impact of services delivered by the council and its community planning partners on users, staff and the wider community.
The Concordat announced between Scottish Government and COSLA in November 2007, based on a new national performance framework, provides the basis for enabling more effective partnership working to improve outcomes for children, young people and families. It puts in place a single set of outcomes and indicators for local authorities and their community planning partners to use in developing their Single Outcome Agreements with the Scottish Government. The associated performance information will form part of the evidence base for self-evaluation, inspection and scrutiny.
A generic quality indicator framework based on high level questions has been developed for children’s services in A Guide to Evaluating Services for Children and Young People using Quality Indicators, published by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) in October 2006. The evaluation framework on which the guide is based is increasingly being used by other inspectorates and scrutiny bodies.
Online CPD and training materials designed to build capacity for self-evaluation within and between services were launched by HMIE in December 2007.
A specific self-evaluation tool called Improving: Services for children. How good is our corporate parenting? How good can we be? was developed by HMIE, and published on 17 June 2009. People who are responsible for providing services for children and their families can use 'How good is our corporate parenting?' to help evaluate and improve their corporate parenting capacity and skills..