Who is this template for?
This template is designed for the setting leaders and the wider leadership team of children’s homes in England. It provides a clear and robust framework to guide your whole-setting self-evaluation and strategic improvement planning.
Why use this template?
Using this template helps you move beyond compliance, turning self-evaluation into a powerful and continuous improvement cycle. It provides a clear structure to guide your thinking and ensures your judgements are consistent, evidence-based, and ready for inspection.
- Inspection-Ready Framework: The template’s structure directly mirrors Ofsted’s Social Care Common Inspection Framework (SCCIF), ensuring your self-evaluation is comprehensive, relevant, and covers all key judgement areas.
- Strengthen Professional Judgement: The process starts with your professional insight, then uses the SCCIF criteria to help you verify and strengthen your judgements, building confidence in your evaluation.
- Create a Robust Evidence Base: Link every judgement to specific evidence by attaching files, notes, or data. This creates a single, organised evidence repository, perfect for demonstrating the impact of your work.
- Drive Meaningful Action: The built-in analysis of ‘helping’ and ‘hindering’ factors helps you understand the root causes behind your performance, leading to targeted, effective action plans that drive real change.
- Foster Collaboration: Invite your leadership team to contribute to a single, shared abacus, building a collective view of performance and fostering a culture of shared ownership for improvement.
- Save Time and Reduce Workload: Unify your evaluation, evidence, and planning in one place. This streamlines the process, avoids duplication, and makes it simple to track progress over time.
How does it work?
This template uses the standard, intuitive iAbacus process: make a judgement, verify it against the criteria, provide your evidence, analyse the helping and hindering factors, and build your action plan. The evaluation is structured around the three key areas of the SCCIF for children's homes:
- Overall Experiences and Progress of Children
- How Well Children are Helped and Protected
- Effectiveness of Leaders and Managers
Gaining Strategic Insight
For leaders overseeing a group of children's homes, this template provides a powerful strategic overview. By using the iAbacus 'Stack' feature, a CEO or Director can instantly view the self-evaluation abacuses from all homes in the group on a single screen. This creates a panoramic view of performance, making it easy to compare progress, identify homes that may require targeted support, and pinpoint successful strategies in high-performing homes that can be replicated across the group.
Clear, Professional Reporting
With a single click, you can export your entire evaluation into a polished, professional PDF report. This is ideal for sharing with stakeholders or presenting to an inspector as a clear summary of your home's self-evaluation. The report showcases a robust and transparent approach to improvement planning, with all judgements backed by clear evidence, demonstrating your commitment to providing the highest quality of care.
References / Source Material
How to Get Started
New to iAbacus? Discover how this template can support your improvement strategy. Book a personalised demo or start a free trial to explore the full platform. Visit www.iAbacus.com to learn more.
Already a subscriber? You can find this template in the template library within your iAbacus account. Simply log in, create a new abacus, and select it from the list to get started.
