Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA)

Supporting Diverse Communities

CAA is undoubtedly one of the key challenges facing public sector organisations with many now seeking to understand and address the implications for themselves and their partners, particularly the increased focus on outcomes and accountability created by the Local Area Agreement. The emphasis on community engagement and satisfaction; on collective accountability across public services; on performance data across partnerships and on area self-evaluation will require councils and their partners to be:

• Open, engaging and responsive to local people;
• Clear about community and service users' needs and priorities;
• Focused on delivering improved prospects for their area through partnerships;
• Fully aware of their performance and the combined outcomes they are delivering;

Our approach to supporting clients draws on our extensive experience of CPA and a clear understanding of the emerging issues. We have worked with more than 75 local authorities at county, unitary and district levels; local strategic partnerships; fire and rescue services, housing associations, police authorities and PCTs. Our support includes:

• Education & information workshops/events for officers and members;
• Issue identification and action planning;
• Healthchecks, self-evaluation development support and peer validation;
• Preparing for inspection/assessment, including Peer Review;
• Post-assessment improvement support.
• Appealing 'red flags'