The tragic and preventable death of Ruth Perry, headteacher at a school downgraded by an Ofsted inspection, has sparked calls for a review of regulatory oversight. While safety and quality must be assured, it’s crucial to consider the impact of regulatory inspections on the well-being of passionate workforces facing complex and challenging environments.
The Association of Directors of Children’s Services stated to use a single-word judgment “for a complex set of services and differing local contexts tells at best a partial story and even risks weakening the very services the inspectorate seeks to improve”.
Regulatory bodies have been criticised for having a closed culture that is self-defensive, rather than forward-thinking, reflective, or receptive to new challenges. Bullying and toxic culture flow through regulatory bodies and continue into the organisations they inspect. Although organisations can undertake legal challenges, this is at a financial cost, and the current law gives little opportunity for success.
A Health and Safety Risk Assessment is a systematic process to identify hazards, evaluate the likelihood and severity of harm, and determine appropriate controls to prevent or mitigate those risks. Regulatory inspections must be recognised as a hazard in line with Health and Safety Executive regulations due to the potential harm they can cause.
Regulators, such as Ofsted, Justice Inspectorates, or the Care Quality Commission, have been identified as causing stress, pressure, reduced morale, and mental health issues that can be a source of risk. The regulators themselves are fearful of challenge, failure, and blame from government and public scrutiny.
The risks associated with regulatory inspections include disruption of service delivery, distraction from the main purpose of the organisation, reputational damage, and financial impact. To mitigate the negative impact of regulatory inspections, a trauma-informed approach should be adopted to create a safe, supportive, and empowering environment for both organisations and regulators.
To improve the regulatory process, context must be taken into account, and risk should be balanced within a whole system, rather than focus on an individual organisation. Instead of looking at the maximum adverse potential outcome from each failure point, the likelihood and unintended consequences should be considered at a whole system level.
Regulators should walk alongside organisations to improve rather than demand action. They should be jointly accountable for raising the standards of public services. If a provider fails, the regulator should participate in the improvement plan and be invested to succeed. Recruitment and training should create an inspection workforce with the credibility and skills necessary to foster improvement while maintaining consistency and objectivity.
How do we find creativity in regulatory inspections who are in crisis and that regulation assures safety, quality, and compliance across industries.
To assess progress, measures could be adopted such as:
- Identifying the quantity of new ideas that have been translated into action
- Identifying the sensemaking capacity within whole systems
- Identifying evidence of connecting leadership which builds bridges and demonstrates networks of shared understanding at all levels of systems
- Identifying staff that have energy, excitement and discuss moving forward
In conclusion, regulatory organisations must undergo a health and safety risk assessment to identify hazards, evaluate the likelihood and severity of harm, and determine appropriate controls to prevent or mitigate those risks. Regulatory inspections are a hazard that must be recognised, and a trauma-informed approach should be adopted to create a safe, supportive, and empowering environment for both the regulator and the systems they oversee. To improve the regulatory process, the context must be taken into account, and the regulatory bodies must walk alongside organisations to improve rather than dictate their actions.
A joint publication with Dr Steve Suckling looked at the role of regulators: The Unintended Consequence of Regulation (crimsonpublishers.com) which may be of interest together with the Kings Report 2018, https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-09/cqc-provider-performance-report-september2018.pdf
