Self-assessment is an opportunity for your local authority to:
- assess and judge your own performance in relation to the quality statements
- use evidence to support your judgements
- highlight key successes, risks and challenges
- identify actions needed to address the most pressing risks.
The Local Government Association (LGA) and ADASS have produced guidance to help develop an adult social care self-assessment. Their guidance states that:
“The completion of an objective, honest and authentic self-assessment of a council’s strengths and areas for improvement is a valuable opportunity to focus improvement planning and delivery in a way that ensures local ownership."
How we use the self-assessment
The self‑assessment is mainly a tool for a local authority to understand and improve its own performance. We use the self-assessment to understand your own view of your local authority’s performance, the impact on people using services and unpaid carers, and your improvement journey.
Format and content
How often you update your self-assessment is up to you; it is not a mandatory document, and we will not ask you to refresh it at specific intervals.
We do not provide a set format or template. We encourage you to tailor your self-assessment to your preferences and you may share your self-assessment in any format you choose. In developing a self-assessment, many local authorities use existing documents such as the Local Account.
Here are some guidelines and features of ‘good’ self-assessments that capture what we are seeking:
- A succinct, high-level narrative overview summarising what you know about performance, how you know it, what the key risks and areas for development/improvement are and how are you progressing them.
- Focus on the local authority’s delivery of its duties under the Care Act 2014, rather than internal service activity.
- Tell us about progress made since the last self-assessment or CQC assessment.
- Highlight the impact of services and projects on people’s experiences and outcomes.
- Arrange narrative into the 4 themes and 9 quality statements we assess against.
- Focus on narrative and impact on people, not volume or length of the document. Self-assessments that are approximately 15-25 pages provide a good level of detail without being overly lengthy.
- Add real-world examples or case studies showing how people have benefited from their care and support.
- Demonstrate how adult social care aligns with other corporate priorities and those of local partners.
Please avoid:
- including every aspect of evidence under each theme of quality statement
- including hyperlinks to additional documents. We want to understand the high-level impact rather than all the ‘working out’ and will request additional documents if needed.