UPDATE NO 363 02 August 2019

Parliamentary Education Committee Inquiry in Social Care Workforce

An inquiry into children’s social work will examine what the workforce needs in order to provide the best help and protection for families, the parliamentary education committee has announced. The committee aims to explore “what social work looks like in 2019” – focusing on the capacity of social workers to intervene early, as well as how effectively they can access professional development and support. More information is available here.

The inquiry will also look at how initiatives and reforms to social work training have impacted on the workforce and how far workers are supported to uphold their statutory duties.

The deadline for written evidence submissions is Friday 30 August

AD Education Network – next meeting Friday 13 September

We are now planning for our next network meeting on the morning of Friday 13 September.  The focus for the agenda will be to continue our discussions about Children Missing Education.  Mike Stoneman from Portsmouth will lead this item for us, bringing together thoughts and recommendations from the task and finish group he has been chairing.

Please contact Alison Rendle (details below) for further information. Alison will be sending out an agenda in the next couple of weeks. If you would like to bring along a colleague with particular responsibility for children missing education, please let Alsion know so that she can keep track of numbers.

DfE Call for Evidence: Children’s homes workforce. Closes 27 August 2019

The DfE have launched a call for evidence on Children’s Homes Workforce, and invites views on:

• establishing professional registration for roles in children’s homes
• existing approaches to regulating the children’s homes workforce

Responses will inform the DfE’s thinking on where improvements could be made so children in children’s homes receive high-quality care in a safe environment.

The consultation closes on 27 August 2019. Click here for further information

AD Safeguarding Network – next meeting 6 September 2019

The next meeting is just over a month off (diary invites have been sent this week), please send  through any suggestions for our agenda, so far we have 

• SEND/EHC Challenges and issues  
• Virtual school best practice

Like all of our meetings it is 9.30 for tea/coffee with a 10.00 start. If you have any items you would like to add to the agenda, please contact Mark Evans (details below) the venue is The Abbey Centre, 34 Great Smith Street, Westminster SW1P 3BU.

Memorandum of Cooperation – Review of effectiveness

Over the next few weeks we will be carrying out a piece of research in relation to the perceived effectiveness of the Memorandum of Cooperation. This has been prompted by the DCS group who have concerns that the MoC maybe losing its effectiveness.  Since inception of the MoC in 2016 use of agency workers across the region has reduced from 16.5% to 15% (despite an overall increase of 322 new C&F SW posts across the region in the same period), the vacancy rate has also reduced from 16.8% to 15.6%.

Despite these changes we know there is huge variability across the region and last year saw a small increase in the use of agency staff (0.2%), consequently we will be conducting a survey with a view to identifying how we can re-energise the MoC. If you have views about what should be included please let Mark Evans (details below) know.

Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs) – initial evaluation

A report by the Department for Education, Evaluation of regional adoption agencies, states there are signs that RAAs have improved key areas such as speeding up recruitment of adopters, securing a greater variety of adoption support and better matching of children with families.

However, the report found that many agencies had delayed becoming fully operational by three to six months, with “several operating nine months plus behind their original plans”, delaying integration. The full report is here.

Contact Pages

NEW – following a user request the contact pages now include a full list of both Lead Members and Chief Executives in the region. As usual, if you spot information that is wrong or out of date, please let Isabelle Gregory know (details below).

Contact lists are available as follows: Directors of Children’s Service; Assistant Directors/Equivalent with lead responsibility for Safeguarding; Assistant Directors/equivalent with lead responsibility for Education; Local Safeguarding Children Boards; Quality Assurance/Audit Managers; Principal Social Workers; Adoption Leads; Early Help Leads; SEND Leads; **NEW ** Lead Members; ** NEW ** Chief Executives.

Peer Challenge Triads – Planning for 2019-20

Following the February 2019 round of South East Peer Challenge triads, ADCS have produced an independent review of the process, which is available here. Following recent debates about suggested further improvements highlighted in the report, Isabelle Gregory has sent an email to each DCS  setting out what’s changed, and asking for colleagues to opt in or opt out of various options.

The Triad Challenges will take place in the period November 2019 – January 2020. Please contact Isabelle Gregory or Richard Tyndall (details below) if you have any questions. 

South East Social Work Health Check

We are now collecting returns for the South East Social Work Health Check. If you have completed your health check using our methodology and would like your return benchmarked against others please contact Mark Evans (details below).

The deadline for submissions is 16 August 2019. 

Complex LAC Project

The Complex LAC Project Team met on 17 July 2019, joined for the first time by Peter Sandiford from the Independent Children’s Home Association. The meeting was attended by over 30 people with representatives from 16/19 authorities (and apologies from those who couldn’t make it). We now have data from all 19 authorities, have started to engage children and young people and are exploring options for more collaborative commissioning arrangements.  

We are now starting to issue authorities with bespoke contributions to sufficiency planning and are working with the provider colleagues to start market shaping. As the project gathers pace and benefits from additional resources we are looking to set up a smaller governance group to enable us to progress things more quickly. Lucy Butler (DCS Oxfordshire, Project Sponsor) will be writing to you shortly setting out the planned changes and asking for volunteers. For more information please contact Mark Evans or Rosemary Perry (details below).