UPDATE NO 201 24 June 2016

National Schools Commissioner Roadshows

Katy Block Policy Officer at ADCS writes:

“Sir David Carter has asked me to share the dates for the remaining NSC Roadshows with ADCS members in case LA colleagues would like to attend.  He also sends his apologies for the late notice.

Due to limited capacity only one or two places are available per RSC region for LA reps, please discuss this invitation in your regional groupings and contact Pras.BOOLAKY@education.gsi.gov.uk to register your attendance.

Best wishes, Katy

NSC Roadshows

– 22 June, 15.30-18.00 – South East South London – Oasis Academy, Homefield Road, Coulsdon, CR5 1ES

– 24 June, 09.00-12.15 – South West – Bristol Metropolitan Academy, Snowdon Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 2HD

– 27 June, 15.00-18.00 – North – The Bamburgh Suit: Newcastle United Football Club. St James Park, Barrack Rd,Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4ST

– 29 June, 14.00-17.00 – East England North East London -Cambridge Union Society, 9a Bridge Street, Cambridge, CB2 1VB

– 1 July, 09.30-15.30 – North West London South Central – The Kings Center, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES

– 4 July, 14.00-18.15 – West Midlands – Bethel Convention Center – Kelvin Way, West Bromwich, B70 7JW

– 14 July, 11.00-13.00 and 14.00-16.00 – East Midlands and Humber – Tapton School, Darwin Lane, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S10 5RG

Office of the Children’s Commissioner – Data Request

The Children’s Commissioner’s Research Team has written:

Dear Colleagues, 

We are writing to you to request some information on the data you hold on children in care and care leavers. In previous requests, we received some feedback which highlighted that local authorities would like prior warning of upcoming requests.  Thus, we have developed this questionnaire which we believe will be of benefit to local authorities and inform you about what we are planning to request. This can be found here. 

As you may be aware, the Children’s Commissioner has statutory legal powers to request relevant data. We are seeking to use these powers to capture the actual data later in the year.  However, the purpose of this questionnaire is to develop a more effective and collaborative approach with regard to how we request and share data. Our ultimate aim is to minimise the burden on the agencies we request the data from.  To that end we could have used our statutory powers for this questionnaire and we have consulted with the ADCS National Performance & Information Management Group (NPIMG) to inform its content.  In turn, the ADCS NPIMG strongly encourage and endorse a complete 100% response to this questionnaire in the spirit of enabling us to make our statutory data requests with as much understanding as possible of the needs of, and pressures on, local authorities.

Kind regards”

This questionnaire will enable the Children’s Commissioner’s Office to gain an understanding of what data you hold and what they can expect from the data request. This will minimise the burden of the requests they will be making in 2016-2017. There are six short questions in this questionnaire

They kindly ask that we make one submission per local authority, and that this survey is completed by 30 June 2016.

Full URL for the survey  https://www.snapsurveys.com/wh/s.asp?k=146601035957

If you have any questions, please contact them on research.network@childrenscommissioner.gsi.gov.uk or Alastair Lee who convenes the regional benchmarking group (contact details below)

South East Grid for Learning

Heather Hadfield (contact details below) writes:

There are two resources that have just been released that might be of interest to the group:

New Arrivals Tool

SEGfL has just relaunched their New Arrivals Tool for schools and support staff, now supporting 17 languages. The tool is designed for EAL learners who have just arrived into the country or from another school. It provides early profiling of the newly arrived learner who does not speak English as their first language. The tool is free to use and can be found at  http://newarrivals.segfl.org.uk

360 Data

SWGfL has just launched a resource called 360Data. It provides schools and SMEs with a data protection and information security self-review tool that helps them review their current position and work to the next steps. The tool can be found: http://360data.org.uk/

12th July 2.00-3.30

Children’s Workforce Virtual Network

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 Evans (details below) with the name and contact details.  

If you would like to participate in the Social Work Health Check Benchmarking please forward any templates or other relevant materials to Mark Evans (details below).

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).

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)