Key management messages
Dear colleague
Last Friday we held a very successful social work conference at Exeter racecourse. Qualified social workers focused the day on research and learning alongside professional development and the role of the College of Social Work. Speakers included Professor Ray Jones, Professor Harry Ferguson and Annie Hudson.
During the afternoon there was an opportunity to attend workshops exploring local, good and new developments in practice. Find out what happened
Ofsted Delivery Improvement Group (DIG)
– update
At our last DIG meeting, the
Group discussed at length issues that have been raised amongst staff about the practicalities
around some of your working arrangements. We also covered
- Learning from other
inspections
- HR update
- One year on from Ofsted's inspection
 Update from Children’s Safeguarding
Improvement Board
Update from the Children’s Safeguarding and
Improvement Board (CIB), with Professor Ray Jones, independent Chair
At
the latest CIB, it was really encouraging to see such an excellent response
from schools across the education system to the Safeguarding Annual Audit. 403 audits were emailed to Devon
schools and to date, 399 audits (99%) have been returned.
The responses are summarised here, alongside the latest Ofsted Improvement Programme Report; an update around working with the health sector; and a message from the independent Chair, Professor Ray Jones
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What the Children and Families Act 2014 means for social work
and social workers
The Act includes reforms for adoption, special educational
needs, children in care - and starts the process of change for children's
homes
The act is wide-ranging, tackling everything from school meals to smoking in
cars, but at its core lie significant – and controversial – changes to how
adoption works and major reforms to improve the lives of looked-after
children.
Please refer to this briefing
note on the new legislation. And the related article in
Community Care
HR update - Manager Briefing: Recruitment
This is the
first monthly update on performance, workforce development
and recruitment activity to share with social work teams. This month the
focus is on recruitment.
In 2013/14, a total of 48 Social Workers have been recruited into Children and Families and Initial Response teams.
Find
out the recruitment targets for 14/15, more about the career
progression scheme, and closing dates for this recruitment round.
Social work traineeship opportunity
We are offering a number of opportunities for
children's and adult services employees to undertake a social work
qualification linked to the Open University.
Children's Services employees - We
are looking for enthusiastic and highly motivated social care staff already
employed in Children’s Services (including Integrated Children’s Services).
Adult Services employees - We are looking
for enthusiastic and highly motivated social care staff already employed in
Adult/People Services.
To find out more, there will also be an
information day on Monday 12 May, at Great Moor House. Details are in the above
links
 Targeted Family Support
2014 will be an
important year for the programme in Devon. We intend to start work with
all of our target of 1370 families. We are making good progress, but
there is still work to do. Read more in the newsletter (found under more info)
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