UPDATE NO 378 15 November 2019

Peer Challenge Triads – 2019-20

Monday’s Peer Challenge went well; Wednesday’s Peer Challenge was postponed at short notice due to the arrival of Ofsted inspectors; I hope today’s triad (West Berks, Bucks and Brighton and Hove) goes well.

Next up are Wokingham, East Sussex and Surrey on 25 November.

2019-20 DCS Peer Challenge dates

 Triad 4 has been re-arranged for 10 January 2020.

For more information please consult the Peer Challenge website page, or contact isabelle Gregory (details below) 

AD Safeguarding Network – next meeting 6 December 2019

Joint Meeting with the East Of England Region –It would be helpful if you could respond to the diary advising if you are planning to attend or not. We already have 6 confirmed attendees and 4 further apologies.  

The meeting is with our equivalent group from the East of England.

To date we have agreed the following agenda items:

• NAAS (National Assessment and Accreditation System)
• East of England – what makes their MoC work?

If you have other topics you would like to discuss, please let Mark Evans (details below) know.

Community Based Safeguarding Model – NSPCC Evaluation

The NSPCC had published an evaluation of Together for Childhood, an evidence-informed approach that brings local partners and families together to make communities safer places for children. The initiative is in place in four areas: Plymouth and Stoke-on-Trent, where the focus is on preventing sexual abuse; and Grimsby and Glasgow, where the focus is on preventing abuse in families facing adversity.

Key learning points include:

• the importance of developing a shared vision
• developing effective local governance and partnerships
• the importance of community engagement
• developing and delivering NSPCC programmes adapted to the local context; and
• being realistic about the time and resource required

The full report is here

Learning from Safeguarding Early Adopter Programme – a report from NCB

The National Children’s Bureau (NCB) has published a report giving an overview of learning from the Safeguarding Early Adopter Programme, a cross-government initiative which brought together 17 projects in England to develop approaches to the new multi-agency arrangements for safeguarding children introduced by the 2017 Children and Social Work Act.

Findings include:

• the changes to the statutory framework presents opportunities for partners to be innovative and facilitate improvements in their local safeguarding arrangements;
• attention should be paid to ensuring leaders in local authorities, police and health come together in equal partnership
• attention should be paid to how partners engage other relevant agencies and practitioners including those in education organisations and the voluntary and community sector.

The full report is here

6 recent DfE publications

1. Children in Need and Children Subject to Child Protection Plans Statistics

2. Character Education Guidance

3. Updated LAIT (local authority interactive tool)

4. Fostering in England 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019

5. Childcare and Early Year Providers 2019 survey

6. Guidance on school and college security, plus support materials and checklists

Children and young people’s mental health: prevention evidence

Public Health England has published a summary report and outputs from a review of evidence for universal approaches to improving children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

This series of reports summarises the evidence for the effectiveness of universal approaches to improving children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

Useful tools include descriptions of promising interventions (Appendix 5) and cross reference to interventions also identified in the Early Intervention Foundation Guidebook (Appendix 7).

The documents are intended for strategic and operational leads, working on children and young people’s mental health. This includes:

• local commissioners
• public health teams
• child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) providers
• clinicians
• leads in educational settings
• those leading children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing Local Transformation Plans (LTPs)
• voluntary, community and social enterprise sector leads and researchers

The report of the findings of a Special Interest Group summarises the approach, findings and recommendations.

Further Education Pathways – securing a successful and healthy life after education

A new report from the Education Policy Institute (EPI), commissioned by the Health Foundation, examines the life outcomes of students studying vocational qualifications.

The research considers the majority of young people who do not pursue a ‘traditional’ A level-Bachelor’s degree route after completing secondary school.  

An increasing proportion of young people now opt for vocational equivalents to A levels, continued GCSE study, and apprenticeships. Despite this, these students are often overlooked in public debates.

This detailed study assesses the opportunities, skills and outcomes of this majority student group, before considering how the provision of vocational qualifications can be improved, in order to enhance life chances.

The full report is here.

AD Education Network – next meeting Friday 24 January

The next meeting of the AD Education Network will be on Friday 24th January 2020 – 10.30-12.30 

For more details of this meeting and the AD Education Network activity please click here or contact Chris Owen (details below)

Challenging School Exclusions – a report by Justice

Justice has published the report of its de Friend Working Party “Challenging School Exclusions“. It suggests there are serious weaknesses: schhools’ lack of understanding of the law; poor communications; rubber-stamping of heads’ decisons; inadequate Independent Review Panels; innaccessible guidance and alienating jargon.

Recommendations include: mandatory training; new role of Independent Reviewer; appeals body in the first tier tribunal; better guidance; the voice of the pupil.

Developing regional quality assurance capacity

The first meeting of Quality Assurance leads was held on 5 November. 16 colleagues attended representing 12 authorities. Apologies were received from another 6 authority reps. The next project meeting has been fixed for 11 February 2020.

Project sponsor Stuart Ashley (Hants and IoW) said , “We were pleased with the turnout and the enthusiasm for this piece of work and it would be very helpful if colleagues can continue this commitment and help shape this piece of work.” 

The project webpage is up and running and full details can be downloaded from there. For further information, please contact Diane Williamson (details below).

SEND Single Route of Redress National Trial – Extension to 31 August 2020

The SEND Delivery Support Team have written:

Dear Regional Coordinators (please cascade to your regional networks),

In April 2018, the Department for Education began a National Trial to extend the powers of the SEND Tribunal to hear appeals, and make non-binding decisions about, health and social care aspects of Education, Health and Care plans. The Trial was due to end on 31 March 2020.

The Department is extending the Trial until 31 August 2020 and on 4 November the DfE wrote to Directors of Children’s Services to inform them and provide further details. 

If you have any questions please contact SENDdeliverysupport@mottmac.com, consult www.sendpathfinder.co.uk, or call the SEND delivery support helpline on 0207 651 0308. 

A copy of the letter written to DCSs is available here.

For further information about this notification and what it means, please contact Tracey Maytas (deatils below).

Research into the use of Social Media by Children’s Social Workers

The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: exploring complexity in an emerging practice Authors: Tarsem Singh Cooner, Liz Beddoe, Harry Ferguson & Eileen Joy Published 22 October 2019

The findings show that Facebook use took multiple forms. Some social workers actively searched service users’ Facebook pages and some opposed any such usage. They also identified further group who were unwillingly “drawn into” acting on Facebook information presented to them by others such as their managers.

Research exploring how children social workers use Facebook in their practice. The article draws from a 15-month participant observation study of social work and child protection practices in England to illustrate how social workers used Facebook to gain another view of service-users’ lives. Social media use was not an intended focus for the study, its presence emerged during the data analysis. While some research has shown that such practices occur, our long-term ethnographic approach provides new insights into how Facebook was actually used in ongoing casework with families and why it was used.

Nuffield Family Justice Observatory: Use of children’s social care data at the local and regional level

An insight piece by the Nuffield Foundation Family Justice Observatory explores the nature, availability and use of child level administrative data at the local and regional level, by children’s social care departments. 

The report finds that there is value in children’s social care data being analysed locally and regionally, as well as purely being exported by local authorities to meet the statutory reporting requirements. However, as a result of austerity the capacity and capability of performance management teams has been reduced which impacts on the ease and frequency that this can take place. 

By working together, it is possible to build our collective capacity and utilise the wealth of data that already exist. This is already starting to happen on the ground, with pivotal learning being shared between local authorities as part of the Children’s Services National Performance and Data Management Group. Attempts are also being made to share learning between local authority analysts, academics, and national organisations, such as the Department for Education and Ofsted as part of the Children’s Social Care Data User Group. 

Alastair Lee, our regional data lead, is involved in the national level discussions about this research, and better use of data tools.

He has published this blog post on the topic of data tools

Please contact him for more information (details below).

EEF publishes new evaluation report on the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP)

Teachers say changes to early learning goals have made them clearer and reduced their workload, but more research needed to establish whether children better prepared for Key Stage 1

An independent report by EEF finds the Government’s proposed changes to the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) – ahead of a full public consultation – have created a more clear and specific set of goals to support teachers in their assessment of children’s development, and have reduced teachers’ workload, allowing them to spend more time with children.

The revised Early Learning Goals (ELGs) were received positively overall by participants and they made practical suggestions to help improve them. However, there were mixed views about whether children would be better prepared for Key Stage 1 as a result of the changes to the ELGs, and about whether they were more or less challenging than before.

This is according to the independent evaluation of a pilot of the reforms published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) on 24 October 2019.

4 recent DfE publications

1. Information on the Condition Improvement Fund for 2020-21 for repairs and maintenance for academies and sixth forms
2. PE and Sports Premium for primary schools. Update on allocations and how it should be spent

3. Early years funding benchmarking tool for LAs
4. Statistics: children in need and child protection. It identifies year on year reductions in the national number of both CiN (down 1%) and CP down (3%).  The report also analyses needs characteristics and assessment activity.