UPDATE NO 196 20 May 2016

New Ways of Working in Social Work

Exploring how flexible job design can drive the retention, recruitment and performance of social workers 

A partnership event from The Timewise Foundation, Skills for Care and the LGA.

Monday 11 July 2016
Skills for Care London Office, 4th floor, 7-12 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9LT
Registration 12:00, for a prompt 12:30 start. 15:45 Close

You are invited to a workshop to explore new ways of working in social work, specifically whether adapting to time, place and task based flexibility could improve the retention, recruitment and performance of experienced social workers.

You will hear the latest insights on developing new ways of working for social work that will improve the resilience and performance of this vital service.

Online booking here places are limited to two per organisation.

Ofsted/CQC SEND Inspection

The Ofsted/CQC Special Educational Need and Disability Inspection Framework and Guidance for Inspectors were published last month.

To support local areas in improving SEND services, on 25 April the DfE published theuser journey mapping research report at 

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 (invitations to the rest of the visiting team are going out today).

Medway (topic: CIN) and Bracknell Forest (topic: LSCB) 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)