UPDATE NO 240 03 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.

SESLIP Steering Group

The SESLIP Steering Group met on Friday 3 March to receive progress reports on the many different projects in the Programme, and to consider the plans and budgets for 2017/18. Subscription reminders have been sent out by East Sussex CC (who have taken over the financial administartion of the Programme), if you have any questions about this, please contact Richard Tyndall (details below).

The Data Benchmarking Group, Regional Adoption Leadership Board, SEND Development Group, Social Care Workforce Project, DCS Peer Challenge and Topical Peer Challenge, Improving Audit Quality, Leadership Development, AD Education Network and AD Safeguarding Network will continue to be supported.

New projects were commissioned under the headings “supporting efficiency savings” and “supporting accreditation” in response to the Children and Soical Work Bill proposals. Suggestions for further new initiatives always welcome.

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.

This 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).

Secondment Opportunity SEO Social Worker – YJB Placements (Ref: 6073)

Debbie Woodgate, Project Manager, Commissioning and Change Programme Directorate, YJB, writes

“The YJB has a vacancy for a social worker in our Placements Team at YJB Offices in London. Please can you share this advertisement with relevant colleagues as we are very keen to gain direct practice input. We are considering secondment opportunities.

“The post is advertised at the Civil Service Jobs Website. If you have any questions about this role please contact me 020 3334 5676 debbie.woodgate@yjb.gsi.gov.uk. The closing date is 7 March 2017″

The post holder must be a qualified Social Worker (HCPC registered) and have knowledge or experience of working with young people in the youth justice system.  

He/she will :

• provide advice and support to operational staff in Placements and Monitoring teams
• advocate defensible decision making    
• integrate the principles of social work into the team
• have advisory and policy responsibilities and provide advice and guidance in investigations and matters of concern
• establish and manage a safeguarding and practitioner forum
• review and assist in quality assurance of placements decisions
• engage with and work to address the present acute and complex custody cohorts

 If you have any questions about this role please contact Debbie Woodgate

Improving the Quality of Audits

On 20 February 2017 SESLIP held a workshop for QA/Audit leads, it was well attended with 18 people representing 13/19 local authorities in the South East.

All authorities present had some form of audit programme in place, most included general and thematic audits.  Practice varied in relation to who conducts audits and the use of multi-agency teams.  

The workshop including sessions sharing audit tools and practice. An overview of what research and evidence from social care and other sectors tells us is most effective in having an impact and improving outcomes. 

The final session explored the options for increasing collaboration across the region to improve audit practice.  

The themes set out below were identified as those that were most likely to be beneficial and have most positive effect: 

• Developing a SE shared set of regional standards for auditing
• Work to calibrate and benchmark audits across the region
• Exploring the creation of templates for reporting audits
• Developing an online resource for sharing audit tools and good practice
• Develop regional audit templates in relation to new challenges and demands as they arise (e.g. JTAI).  

We envisage this work will be supported and facilitated by the project, but with much of the activity being led and completed by the local authority QA/Audit Leads.

The next steps in the project will be developing a detailed proposal including a project outline, budget and description of the outcomes that will be delivered. This will be completed for consideration by the Project Sponsor (Michael Bracey DCS Milton Keynes) and the SESLIP Steering Committee.   

Please contact Mark Evans or David Goosey (details below) if you want to find out more.

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.

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).

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).