UPDATE NO 202 01 July 2016

Data Benchmarking

Thank you to colleagues at Oxfordshire for supplying Adoption 2015-16 Q4 data which has now been incorporated into a revised version of the regional benchmarking data.

The regional benchmarking report is prepared under the Data Sharing Protocol which means that unaudited data has a restricted circulation. Your colleagues in the Data Benchmarking Group have access to these restricted reports, which are for internal use only and not for publication. If you want to know more, please contact Alastair Lee (details below).

Early Help

A Charter for Early Intervention in Policing has been published by the Early Intervention Foundation – the Early Intervention Academy for Police Leaders which is a registered charity, and is hosted by the LGA. Their website has a host of resources on the topic of What Works in Early Intervention.

From an EIA press release:

The ‘Early Intervention Academy for Police Leaders’ was launched in July 2015 in partnership with the Home Office and College of Policing. It has heard from national experts, accessed the latest evidence base on early intervention and shared ideas to enable participants to develop practical plans that they can take back to their chief officers and implement in their forces and with their partners.

The Police forces represented in the EIF academy are:  Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, Devon and Cornwall, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Humberside, Lancashire, Norfolk, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Staffordshire (Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner), Thames Valley, West Midlands, Metropolitan Police Service.

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 has now closed with seven participants (some carried over from Round 8):

Bracknell Forest – LSCB; Kent (tbc); Medway (CiN); Portsmouth (CSE); Southampton (tbc) West Sussex (MASH); Windsor and Maidenhead (Corporate Parenting)

The next step is to finalise the last two topics, and then for the host and visiting DCSs to agree dates for field work (this Autumn, Winter or Spring). The planning grid shows who is visiting whom. Richard Tyndall (details below) will be sending out emails announcing the progress of these arrangements and inviting nominations in due course.

Memorandum of Cooperation – Children’s Social Work Agency Event

Our MoC Agency event went ahead on 1July.  It was very well attended with over 60 attendees representing 29 agencies.  Julie Fisher (Deputy Chief Executive & DCS Surrey) opened the event. The second session included full discussion of the MoC.

The final session explored the potential for greater collaboration between local authorities and agencies in future, there was a strong appetite to work together to improve referencing (ensuring quality, speeding up the process and minimising duplication) and also for greater inter-regional arrangements.

Agency colleagues were generally positive about the MoC and most had some experience of working with similar arrangements in other regions.  I have attached the slides from meeting for your information. Many thanks to Julie and Surrey for hosting the event and also Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, West Berks, West Sussex and Kent colleagues for helping to facilitate the meeting.

Regional Adoption Leadership Board

The South East ALB met on 27th June in Wokingham; the meeting was less well attended than usual (partly due to train issues), nonetheless, the group had a useful discussion about latest developments in the regional adoption agency projects, including the most recent email from the DfE.

Milton Keynes is involved in one of the demonstrator projects; otherwise to that, none of the South East RAAs are on the accelerated programme.  We also had a useful update from First4Adoption regarding the Adoption Register project. The group is considering it’s terms of reference and frequency of meetings in the light of the RAA agenda and national developments involving the ALB.  The next meeting is on 15th September 2016

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).

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)