UPDATE NO 200 17 June 2016

Data Benchmarking

The Data Benchmarking Group met on 16 June. It agreed to add a new category to the Social Care Benchmarking Dataset: Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) LAC. This was proposed by Kent and agreed.

It also agreed nine new Early Help indicators. All LAs are in different places but all attendees thought they will be able to make some sort of return. Some commented that they would be relying on other teams, which may pose challenges so support from DCSs with this will be valuable. Please help!

It was also discussed that the Early Help indicator work is in a development phase and that further work around definitions and comparative analysis will follow.

Early Help Benchmarking Indicators to be collected

	Description
1	Referrals in to Early Help Services per quarter
2	Re-referrals in to Early Help services which were received within 12 months of a previous referral  per quarter
3	Early Help Assessments per quarter
4	Proportion of Early Help Assessments per quarter leading to Ongoing Early Help work (i.e . A plan, an intervention etc) ‘Step up’ to Social Work NFA
5	Average Length of Time in working Days: Referral to Assessment in the quarter
6	Referrals to Social Care that had prior Early Help intervention in the previous 12 months
7	Referrals to Early Help that were “stepped down” from Social Care
8	Number of children being worked with by Early Help services (snapshot at the end of the quarter)
9	Threshold/Level of Need of children being worked with by Early Help services

Children’s Workforce Virtual Network

On 14 June, we held our first teleconference meeting. It was well attended with representatives from Kent, Hampshire, Bracknell, West Sussex, West Berks and Windsor and Maidenhead. The meeting covered a wide array of topics including SW Recruitment and Retention,  Children and Social Work Bill (accreditation, knowledge and skills statements, regulator, new freedoms etc),  Regional Children’s Social Work Websites, training partnerships and use of the social work health check. The discussion highlighted the extent of rapid change and development in this critical area of children’s services. The telephone format worked well and enabled participants to  obtain the benefits of collaborative working without having to travel.  The group have agreed to share documentation and experiences of using the social work health check with a view to investigating the potential for some benchmarking work. 

If you would like to participate in the Social Work Health Check Benchmarking please forward any templates or other relevant materials to Mark@markevansconsulting.co.uk 

If you would like to participate directly or nominate some to represent you authority in the next virtual meeting (12th July 2.00-3.30) , please provide Mark@markevansconsulting.co.uk with the name and contact details.  

Health Visiting Services briefing

Local Government Association (LGA) and the Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) Joint Briefing on the commissioning of health visiting services

The briefing starts:

We are concerned about the intense lobbying from professional bodies representing health visitors (HV) and school nurses as well as the recent negative media attention about the decommissioning of health visiting and school nursing services. …

Download the full briefing here

Joint Targeted Area Inspection

Stuart Gallimore, DCS at East Sussex and Chair of the ADCS’s Standards, Performance and Inspection Policy Committee, asked me to share this briefing note about the new Joint Targeted Area Inspection for dissemination to all LAs

Here is a presentation from Central Beds Council detailing their recent experience of the JTAI and one from South Tyneside is available on the ADCS website. 

Friday 1st July 2016

Memorandum of Cooperation – Children’s Social Work Agency Event – 1st July 2016 10 to 12.30. Kingston upon Thames. 

Surrey County Council have very kindly agreed to host and introduce an event planned for agency providers who work with authorities across the region. The aim of the event is promote better knowledge and understanding of the MoC. It will also consider the potential for a collaborative approach to developing the MoC. Julie Fisher Deputy Chief Executive and DCS will be introducing the event. 

We need your help and support to promote the event, click here for a draft invitation which needs to be personalised to your authority and sent to the children’s social work agencies you work with.  With the invitation please also send the MoC which has list of signatory authorities contained within it.
We also need a couple of volunteers who understand the MoC and were involved in setting it up to assist on the day. If you would like to volunteer please contact Mark Evans (contact details below).

Audit Improvement Project

Kim Drake (DCS at Southampton) is the lead on a new SESLIP project designed to consider how we can work across the region to improve the quality of audit work. As part of this project Kim is looking to investigate the appetite for sharing best practice and the potential for peer auditing between authorities. 

As a starting point we are looking to identify a list of contacts to start the dialogue with. We are compiling lists of Quality Assurance/Audit Managers and Principal Social Workers. To help us build the contact list please can you advise who you would like to involve in the project and provide their contact details (name, job title, email address and phone number) to Richard Tyndall (contact details below).

Safeguarding Pressures Phase 5

Carole Brooks of ADCS has written

In case this has not reached your attention yet, ADCS are updating Safeguarding Pressures Research this year and will be sending a request to their members (DCSs) for information (some data and questions for Safeguarding ADs to answer)

SGP5 (as affectionately known) will be the same timeframes as before (ie late August)  to allow LAs time to submit returns. Sadly ADCS are not able to get data direct from DfE and the additional request on data teams is not one we make lightly. Whilst there are more data items included than before (e.g. UASCs and refugee families), they are hopefully ones that everyone will feel the benefit from knowing about – but we’ve batted some things back and excluded them as well as dropped other questions to try hard to keep it manageable again. Some LAs are going to be piloting it before sending out to make it as easy as possible for you.  The request for information, as always is voluntary but the more LAs that provide evidence, the greater the impact in providing robust evidence for policy makers and ADCS to use to support LAs.  

More information can be found here. Thank you all so much, Carole

Topical Peer Challenge Round 9

Topical Peer Challenge Round 9 is now open. The detailed guidance is available here, and is largely unchanged from previous versions.

Portsmouth (topic: CSE) is confirmed for 28/29 November. The visiting DCS will be Alison Alexander.

Medway (topic: CIN), Bracknell Forest (topic: LSCB) and West Sussex (topic: tbc) are now in planning

Windsor and Maidenhead (topic: Corporate Parenting) is now postponed. All enquiries to Richard Tyndall (contact details below).

Southampton have a commitment held over from Round 8 (Ofsted, staff changes and other impediments confounded our best laid plans). I look forward to hearing from colleagues and others about whether or not they wish to join Round 9.

Kent (topic: tba) have also indicated they wish to participate.

Please contact Richard Tyndall (details below) to register your interest

Leadership Development

We continue to offer our successful portfolio of Leadership Development Courses all of which have been positively evaluated by delegates.

This year we have added a new course recently piloted in Hampshire and IoW. The senior team attended a one-day Coaching to Improve Performance workshop to ensure the Directorate were fully conversant with the training undertaken by their three cohorts of managers on two-day programme and to develop their own coaching skills to use in their own performance management roles.

We are also offering LAs the opportunity to train their own trainers for all our courses. Our aim is to increase the capacity and capability across the region  to ensure future sustainability within LAs.

A new departure for us has been running these training courses for adult services and for schools so please contact Di Smith, details below, if this is of interest to you. 

All courses are run in-house in the LA who provides the venue. Each course is accompanied by a range of training resources for the delegates including a comprehensive handbook. The current courses on offer are as follows and details of each course and the costs for each can be found by downloading the April 2016 Leadership Development Prospectus. 

Coaching to Improve Performance

Embedding a Coaching Culture

Leading Change in Times of Austerity

Step Up to Leadership   

We can also arrange one-to-one coaching, especially to support newly appointed 2nd and 3rd tier managers

If you require further details or wish to book a course please get in touch with Di Smith (contact details below)