UPDATE NO 204 15 July 2016

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) 28&29 November; Southampton (tbc); West Sussex (MASH); Windsor and Maidenhead(Corporate Parenting).

The planning grid is begining to fill up with confirmed names and dates. I look forward to receiving further confirmations from colleagues involved. I am also recruiting volunteers who would like to go on my “reserve list” of potential Peer Challenge visitors that I can call on to fill vacancies on the planned grid. If you would like to be considered for this list, please contact Richard Tyndall (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. 

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). Thanks to colleagues from Bracknell Forest, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Milton Keynes, Reading, Slough,West Sussex, West Berkshire, Windsor and Maidenhead, and Wokingham who have supplied contact details for this project. 

Leadership Development

Southampton have just signed up for the Step up to Leadership course in September 2016

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-dayCoaching 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)

Action research into improvement in local children’s services

Heather Wills of the LGA has written:

“I wanted to share with you the final report of the ISOS Action research into improvement in local children’s services, together with a 14-page summary which identifies the key enablers of and barriers to improvement, informed by work with councils using a range of intervention approaches and at different stages of their improvement journeys.”

LGA hopes that the report will act as a kind of ‘handbook’ for Lead Members for Children’s Services and other senior leaders involved with children’s services. It is intended that there will be regional sessions for people to consider its findings in the Autumn, facilitated by ISOS.