Achievements and Challenges. A picture of social care provision in council areas across Wales in 2009/10, drawn from the reports of the 22 Statutory Directors for Social Services.

In the summer of 2007, the WLGA Social Services Policy Group and the Association of Directors of Social Services Cymru (ADSS Cymru) endorsed a process which proposed that the responsibility for reporting performance in social services be transferred to individual councils. This marked a change in performance management accountability and fed into the guidance on the statutory responsibilities of directors of social services which were later issued by the Welsh Assembly Government. It led to the creation of the Annual Council Reporting Framework (ACRF) which included the publication of an overview report by each statutory director of social services. These published documents state the director’s view of current effectiveness and priorities for improvement. The SSIA was asked to support the introduction of the first new reports. It commissioned SCP Consult to develop methodology, and worked closely with two pioneer Councils (Torfaen and Wrecsam) to produce a toolkit – refer to http://www.ssiacymru.org.uk/toolkit to support the reporting process. This toolkit was not designed to be prescriptive but to assist local authorities in producing their Annual Report. It is also a living document and will be updated in response to the ongoing developments required of the Annual Reporting Framework. SSIA agreed with ADSS Cymru and the WLGA that the key themes from those first 22 Annual Reports should be drawn together to provide a rich source of analysis and commentary on issues such as any significant improvements being made, major challenges faced in common, opportunities for, and brakes on, progress, particular pockets of achievement or difficulty, and areas where collaboration might drive faster improvement.