Resources: Review - The future direction of strategic partnerships

Until now, the education inspectorate Ofsted has assumed lead responsibility for the inspection of service provision across the range of settings and agencies for children and young people.

The way in which service provision for children and young people is developing can be confusing. There is a focus on common assessment protocols and information sharing, an added emphasis on multi-agency working and inter-professional practices, and a move towards area-based provision. The nature of the relationships between the voluntary and statutory sectors is being fundamentally renegotiated, while agencies are moving towards joint commissioning of services.

One of the strengths of this book is that it describes changes in the context of well-traced recent history. It reaches beyond the impact of the Laming report and the murder of Victoria Climbie to the long-term development of inter-agency practice in the 1980s and 1990s, and a clear policy thrust towards "strategic partnerships".