UPDATE NO 241 10 March 2017

SE DCS Peer Challenge

Plans are progressing well for the Challenge Visits to Portsmouth (6/7 April), Southampton (18/19 May) and Brighton and Hove (27/28 June). A review date in November 2017 is being planned, following which a decision will be taken about whether or not to renew the SE DCS Peer Challenge in 2018, and if so, with what changes following this year’s learning about what works.

Volunteers Required

We are looking for two more colleagues, one with YOS, and another with Social Care expertise for Brighton and Hove (27/28 June) to join the team led by Steve Crocker (DCS Hampshire and IoW) and including Rachel Morgan (Head of Standards and Effectiveness at Bracknell Forest).

You should be operating at AD/Head of Service level and have the support of your DCS. Please contact Richard Tyndall (details below) to register your interest.

Data Benchmarking Group

The next Data Benchmarking Group meeting will be held on Wednesday 15 March from 10:00 to 3:00 in Crawley Library. Please pass any suggestions for the agenda to Alastair Lee (contact details below). The current draft agenda includes a discussion of the Early Help data that has recently been included in the collection template.

Last week the (Restricted) Quarterly Benchmarking Report 2016-17 Q3 (Social Care) [Excel & PDF versions] has been published. The Adoption Benchmarking report for Q3 will be published shortly. Thank you to colleagues who have supplied the input data.

‘Restricted’ reports contain unsuppressed data, and data which is not in the public domain. Please do not share these outside of your LA. Colleagues in the Data Benchmarking Group have the password access they require to access these reports. If you have any questions, please contact Alastair Lee (details below).

AD Education Network – 17 March 12.30

There will be an extra meeting of the AD Education Network open to colleagues interested in exploring the emerging landscape of sector-led initiatives attempting to provide a sustainable solution for support, collaboration and co-operation between and for schools.

Some colleagues refer to working on creating a “Trust”, others a “Company”, still others a “Partnership” or an “Alliance”. However the group wanted to put aside some time to explore the different purposes of these new organisations as well as the new structures and names.

Brighton and Hove Education Partnership Report

The meeting will be held in Booth Room, The Abbey Centre, 34 Great Smith Street, Westminster SW1P 3BU, (please note revised time) at 12.30 Friday 17 March. Please can you contact Richard Tyndall (details below) indicating whether or not you would like to attend this meeting, either alone or with other colleagues (to give us a clue about room size and catering numbers). Thanks to Brighton and Hove, Milton Keynes, Medway, Oxfordshire, Portsmouth and Wokingham for positive responses.

Whether or not you plan to attend or send a colleague, please can you share with Richard any background papers you have developed on this topic. Please can you indicate whether or not the papers are appropriate for posting to the public section of the SESLIP website (if they remain confidential I will make arrangements to put them in the password protected section of our website and issue appropriate passwords).

Leadership Development

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

We are 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. Courses can also be delivered with adult services and/or for schools. 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)