UPDATE NO 372 04 October 2019

Welcome to Alison Michalska, new LGA Children’s Improvement Advisor – South East

Alison Michalska (contact details below) has now started work as the LGA’s Children’s Inmprovement Adviser in the South East, and was introduced to the SEADCS Branch meeting in Brighton this morning.

Alison is getting to know the region and welcomes invitations to visit over the coming months. Please contact her (details below) to arrange a visit. One her first tasks will be consultation with Lead members across the region about their support needs.

Multi-agency Safeguarding Reforms

Katy Block of ADCS writes

Our rep on the DfE’s national working group overseeing the reforms to LSCBs and CDOP arrangements shared a short presentation from the DfE at a policy committee meeting last week.  

It summarises how the new MASA arrangements have panned out nationally in terms of make up, membership, remits and scrutiny arrangements, it’s actually very helpful! Here’s the link again

Association of Colleges – Contact List

Katy Block of ADCS writes

A rep from the AoC attended the most recent meeting of the ADCS Educational Achievement Policy Committee to discuss all things further education with the group.  

It was an interesting session and committee members asked for regional AoC contacts to be distributed more widely, see document attached, to allow these discussions to be picked up and built on at a regional level.

National Missing Person Conference, Hull, Wednesday 29th January 2020

The staff support officer for the national policing lead on missing people has been in touch to invite ADCS reps to attend a free conference on missing people in the new year.  An emerging agenda is attached here, all police forces in the UK have been invited to attend, the audience will be Missing Person leads (Supt level), investigators and teams, CSE teams, charities and NGOs. 

The speakers will be: 

ACC Catherine Hankinson, National Police Lead for Missing, West Yorkshire Police 
The charity Missing People
Ann Coffey MP
UK Missing Persons Unit
Other related Police speakers on Missing Persons.

Please get in touch with Katy Block at ADCS to book a place or find out more.

Early years research request

Senior researchers from the Education Policy Institute have recently been in touch with ADCS to seek our members’ views on the most helpful areas of future focus, particularly in relation to the early years.  They have some broad ideas, see right, but are also open to suggestions.  Please can colleagues contact Katy Block for more information/ with any thoughts. 

– mapping local services: what services for young children and parents exist in different areas? how joined-up and/or integrated are these services? What is the best geographical level for planning early years services (local authority, regional, etc)?

– food poverty and hunger: local food bank usage and school breakfast and holiday hunger programmes

– local availability and usage of libraries and book clubs; availability of affordable EAL books; 

– early years and SEND.

Broad ideas are

• – mapping local services: what services for young children and parents exist in different areas? how joined-up and/or integrated are these services? What is the best geographical level for planning early years services (local authority, regional, etc)?
• – food poverty and hunger: local food bank usage and school breakfast and holiday hunger programmes
• – local availability and usage of libraries and book clubs; availability of affordable EAL books; 
• – early years and SEND.

Education Data Group

In December 2018, the AD Education Network set up a Data Group, with a focus on the Inclusion agenda – Children Missing Education (CME), children Electively Home Educated  (EHE) and children on part-time timetables. The first meeting was held in Crawley on 4 July and it was attended by 14 colleagues from 10 LAs.

It discussed systems and processes LAs have in place to collect, monitor and analyse data on CME, EHE and children on reduced timetables; data not collected as part of any statutory returns. CME and EHE data is collected as part of the SE Social Care benchmarking quarterly collection, but there are different definitions of CME across the region.

Mike Stoneman, (Portsmouth) gave a presentation on the work of the CME Task and Finish Group at the AD Education Network on Friday 13 September, which echoed a lot of the issues the Data Group raised in terms of the data held on these groups of children. 

The AD Education Network will propose a list of measures around CME, EHE and part-time timetables that could be collected as part of a regular benchmarking exercise. This proposal will be discussed at the next Education Data Group in November so that the group can discuss which measures can be reported on a regular basis and agree the definitions for these measures. The outcome of this discussion will be brought to the next AD Education Network meeting on Friday 22 November.

It was agreed to send a questionnaire to the Data Group to better understand what systems are in place and what definitions are in use. There were several examples of good practice on collecting data on part-time timetables, and LAs have shared their templates and guidance documents within the Group. There was also an NCER update and a presentation on Brighton and Hove showcasing their School Information Packs. The Data Group agreed that the meetings were really helpful and agreed to hold these meetings termly, with the next meeting taking place in Crawley on Thursday 14 November.

To find out more, please contact Daryl Perilli (details below)

Data Tools Project

The aim is to identify what data tools are being used and what is the best way for these to be shared. A survey has identified 10 tools and the workshop looked at barriers to good analysis and collaboration and at solutions to these problems.

Barriers

1. IT systems and data structures: difficulty reporting and sharing analysis due to commercial restrictions in systems and different data architectures 
2. Skills of the team: with staff turnover and limited training, the technical expertise (data teams) and comfort with data (children services teams; senior management) varies a lot between and within LAs.
3. Quality of data: the quality of underlying data varies, which leads to recording and reporting issues.
4. Lack of data culture and trust: teams tend to operate in silos and lack the necessary mutual trust to fully exploit the available data

Solutions

1. Pushing for common data structures and standards between LAs. This could be facilitated by DfE and/or Ofsted changing their reporting requirements.
2. Developing a standardised data training offer to attain common technical skills qualifications.
3. Providing a common legal basis and guidance around information governance, data protection and data ethics.
4. Developing a stronger data culture by engaging more senior leaders and team managers with the potential of insights from data.

Participants also came up with ideas of tools they would like to use to facilitate their analysis work and provide new insights.

We revisited this in the Data Network meeting in September and discussed how sharing a tool might impact on the LA and person who has shared it. This resulted in a proposal to develop a Knowledge Hub group with three repositories:

1. Tools for use “as is”, please don’t contact the originating LA
2. Tools under development, please contact the originating LA to help with development
3. Tools that are fully functional, please contact the originating LA to help with development

This is currently being set up and will be promoted to the Data Network.

Alongside this work, because there is significant overlap with how the ChAT was developed, we are running a workshop on the 3 October with the developers of the ChAT (including representation from Ofsted), Social Finance, Alastair Lee and Daryl Perilli. The aim of this is to learn from both projects and look at the longer term sustainability of a curated data tools library.

For more information please contact Alastair Lee (details below)

Developing Models of Social Work Project

Following initial scoping, the Developing Models of Social Work Project page is live and contains deatuls of this new SESLIP project 

The objective of this piece of work is to share and develop new models of social care practice that fit the times. Authorities are questioning their models of social care practice. Some are seeking to integrate early help and social care and would value some collective thinking about how these services are delivered in this new context. Some large LAs have been spending significant amounts to deliver major systems changes. We will investigate the options for shared learning and other collaborative approaches to support new models of practice.

Please can Local Authorities ensure the Principal Social Worker contact list is updated by 7 October 2019

A questionnaire will be sent to Local Authorities in order to collect and collate information about models of practice that are being used across the region.

This project is sponsored by Nikki Edwards, DCS Bracknell Forest.

For more information contact Diane Williamson (details below)

Improving the Quality of Audit of Social Work Practice – 5 November

Following initial scoping of the Quality Assurance project, the next step is for us to meet with the QA leads on 5 November to explore current Quality Assurance practice. This meeting will explore what LAs do, why they do it, what impact does it have and how do they know ; what are the barriers and challenges and what are the levers and drivers to make it work. The meeting will focus on QA of social work practice and we will try to identify some themes, best practice, and opportunities for shared learning. 

We will then discuss these findings with the AD Safeguarding network to inform the planning for a regional workshop to be held in the spring. The 5 November meeting will be facilitated by Stuart Ashley from Hampshire on behalf of Steve Crocker who is the project DCS sponsor.

Could you please check that the contact list is accurate and if there is anyone else you would like to be invited to the 5 November meeting please send details to Diane Williamson (contact details below) so that invitations and agenda can be sent out.

The project now has its own webpage where the outputs of the scoping exercise and project brief can be found.

November – January 2019-20 Peer Challenge

The cycle of preparation for the November – January 2019-20 Peer Challanges is underway. We have brought forward the start date by a few months to avoid a clash with the Ofsted cycle of annual conversations which are due to start in 2020.

Please go to the Peer Challenge in the South East page if you want further information.