 Welcome...
It's been a busy start to the New Year. As well as getting on with the day job of keeping local children safe and well, we've been preparing for the Department for Education's visit.
We're continuing to roll out our new approach to improving our practice - Signs of Safety - read more below. But we also know that we need to reduce the number of cases you're managing, so this month we're launching a new social worker recruitment campaign - 'We're with You'. We'll be sharing more information with you about this soon.
But most importantly, we want to hear from you. Is our communication right? Are you able to share your views? Please take a few minutes to fill in our quick survey so we can make sure we are getting things right. And remember, you can contact me any time about what we're doing and your ideas for improvement.
John Gregg, Director of Children's Services
john.gregg@coventry.gov.uk
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DfE Review
The
Department for Education visited the Council to review our progress against the
Children’s Services Improvement Plan and Improvement Notice yesterday (Tuesday 2
February).
Their focus was Looked After Children. They met with young
people in care and care leavers and held a focus group with foster carers, adopters, social workers and team managers. We will feed back soon about their visit.
Moving on up
Latest figures show Coventry and Warwickshire is carrying out care proceedings quicker than the legal limit of 26 weeks.
Over the last two years the length of proceedings has reduced from an average of 44 weeks to an impressive 24.4 weeks.
A number of procedures have changed, but key to the steady improvement
has been partnership working across the local
family justice system and the
introduction of a new role of Court Progression Officer.
Julie Newman, Legal Services Manager, said: "It's great to see our times continuing to improve, but the people
who are benefiting most from this are the children
involved."
 Youth Service drama project
The
next drama performance by the Canley Theatre Group will be a play called “What
are they like”, a National Theatre 500 Competition play which will be performed
at three youth centres.
The
production follows the success of ‘Ctrl Alt Del’ and involves young people from
across the city. It was written by Lucinda Coxon – who also wrote the script
for hit film ‘The Danish Girl’ - and is about adolescence. Read
more.
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 Signs of Safety
A new approach to improving how we work with families is
being rolled out across Children’s Services.
Signs of Safety helps everyone involved with a child/young
person – including the child/young person themselves – to think about ways to
keep safe, healthy and settled, wherever they are living. More than 90 people
have now been trained in how to apply the Signs of Safety approach in their practice. The latest group to be trained is pictured above.
There are more courses planned over the next few months.
Check out when in the Children’s Services Training Portfolio on Beacon.
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Social workers join Early Help and Prevention
Service
Three
new social workers have joined, or will join, Early Help and Prevention Service –
and this will increase to five over the next couple of months, once recruitment
is finalised.
Their role includes carrying a small caseload, but they will be fundamental in
supporting and helping staff, partners and organisations to manage risk at
lower levels of intervention. Read
more.
 Safeguarding conferences have moved
Safeguarding conferences are now taking place in the new conference suite on floor two of Broadgate House.
Families and agencies who attend the conferences are being directed to use the entrances to the Customer Service Centre in the Upper Precinct - next to River Island or up the ramp from Broadgate onto the first floor balcony overlooking the Precinct.
The Safeguarding Team is still based in the east wing of Broadgate House.
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We've made significant steps to improve over the last eighteen
months. The service is working at pace to embed and sustain the changes
already made. Our focus over the next few months will be to:
-
Implement the workforce strategy to stabilise the workforce and reduce the reliance
on agency workers. The new social
worker recruitment campaign “We’re with You” will help with this.
- Improve the quality
and consistency of practice by continuing to progress through auditing and
quality assurance, ensuring that learning is being fed back in to
practice.
- Ensure that there
is a greater availability of placement choice for all children by implementing
the placement sufficiency strategy.
- Recruit more foster carers and specialist carers to increase capacity to avoid
residential placements for more complex children and young people
- Ensure
that the best use is made of the available resource/budget to maximise the
impact on children’s lives.
Get in touch
Email joanne.moynihan@coventry.gov.uk with your updates, comments or suggestions
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