local authorities

Report that sets out solutions to some of the problems faced by public services as regards the use of IT.

Briefing paper that provides a framework for early intervention for professionals taking crucial commissioning and funding decisions at the local authority level. It distils key common threads from the plethora of recent reports on the pressing need for this approach. Most significantly, it addresses emerging misconceptions about how an authority- or borough-wide early intervention strategy should be delivered and, in particular, challenges an overly ‘programmatic’ approach.

Publication that contains statistics obtained from the staffing census held across all local authorities on 4 October 2010. It presents findings from a range of statistics to provide an overall picture on staffing levels, and details about the staff in filled posts.

Study to assess the extent of children living in kinship care in the UK and in particular to estimate the numbers of children who were living in informal kinship care.

Consultation document on proposals for a revised framework for the inspection of local authority fostering services and independent fostering agencies.

IRISS has published two reports commissioned from the Glasgow School of Social Work on evidence-informed performance improvement.

The first report, written by Robin Sen and Pam Green Lister, reviews the literature relevant to the National Performance Indicator on increasing the overall proportion of local authority areas receiving positive child inspection reports.

IRISS has published two reports commissioned from the Glasgow School of Social Work on evidence-informed performance improvement.

The first report, written by Robin Sen and Pam Green Lister, reviews the literature relevant to the National Performance Indicator on increasing the overall proportion of local authority areas receiving positive child inspection reports.

The Local Government Group commissioned The National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales (NFER) to undertake an independent research study to draw out key messages and learning from the safeguarding children peer review programme. Telephone interviews were conducted with staff from five local authorities and their partners, as well as with a range of peers from the review teams of those local authorities. Interviews were carried out between August 2010 and February 2011.

The LARC3 research findings provide important "real time‟ evidence about the cost effectiveness of early intervention. At a time when there is increasing interest in promoting sector-led models of service improvement, the LARC model, in which local authorities and national agencies undertake collaborative research, has potential as one of the "improvement tools‟ available to local authorities and government.

This project was commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in December 2009 with the aim of providing an insight into identity-based bullying of young people in schools and in the wider community, and examining the preventative and responsive strategies currently being used to address it in local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales.