Welcome...
It has been a long time coming but we can finally and officially tell the world the outcome of our Ofsted inspection!
I'm proud to say we have moved up into the 'requires improvement' category.
The pace we have moved since Ofsted left has been relentless as we work together on our journey of improvement.
However, I urge you to draw breath, have a read of the report, and reflect on the incredible work we have all done to get to this point.
Finally, in the spirit of continuing to learn and improve, let me draw your attention to two events below that I hope you have signed up for - our Putting Practice First conference and the Digital Days workshops.
John Gregg, Director of Children's Services
john.gregg@coventry.gov.uk
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Putting Practice First
A series of dynamic
and engaging children, young people and adult practice focussed events takes place next week.
Putting Practice First, from June
26-30, is inviting social work and children’s services professionals from Coventry
and all over the country to take part in a series of events and workshops.
One of the events will be
Knocking on the door – a play focusing on a child protection home visit and a
workshop looking at how practitioners work with men in early help and child
protection.
The play is a collaboration
between Geese Theatre and leading social work academic and author Professor
Harry Ferguson and will merge a traditional key-note lecture with vivid theatre
performances.
See the full itinerary.
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Permanency
Tracking for Looked After Children
The Leadership team has agreed to implement a new permanency
planning tracking process for looked after children following feedback from the
recent Ofsted inspection. These
arrangements are due to commence in July 2017 (date to be agreed) and are
designed to provide sufficient oversight and timely decision making and action
leading to the achievement of legal and emotional security at the earliest
possible point.
This will mean a minor change to the remit of the
existing weekly Legal Planning Meetings, and two new panels will be introduced
that follow the child’s journey through to permanence. This also means that
some existing panels will be disbanded, including CPOP, Care Prevention Panel
and the Children’s Social Care Resource Panel, to avoid duplication.
Apart from the stage 1 panel, the other 2 new panels (stage
2 and stage 3) will be piloted in the first instance. The pilot will run from
July to September 2017 before they are rolled out across the City. The pilot
area will be all cases in the North East Neighbourhood.
The purpose of the new panel arrangements is to:
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Ensure that permanency planning for
children is progressed with the pace and urgency that is needed, including
achieving legal or emotional security for children and young people.
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Improve the timeliness and the quality
of evidence for court work, including pre-proceedings work. This should also
include ensuring assessments of connected persons are timely and robust and
those children and their carers receive appropriate support.
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Ensure that children are prepared
well for moving to their permanent home, including starting life story work at
an earlier stage.
You must ensure
that you are clear what the purpose of your attendance at these panels are and
come prepared with the right paperwork. Your managers should be discussing the
remit of these panels with you in detail so if you haven’t heard anything about
this, then please ask your team manager to talk to you about this.
Menu of Services
There will soon be a central place to go to find out what
services are available for practitioners to access in children’s services with
a link to the Documents Library to access the referral form for the service
that you need. The Menu of Services will briefly describe the service on offer,
what the criteria for access is, and how to make a referral. Further
information about this and the link will be available shortly.
Display shows benefits
of Signs of Safety
Children & Families First Service (North East)
have put together a brilliant interactive display board encouraging
practitioners to have a go with the Signs of Safety (SoS) approach.
Signs of Safety is our expected way of working to help improve how we work
with families. It 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.
Team Manager Bharti Patel said: “This has helped us
to change our way of thinking to truly understand the importance of working
together to build a culture of transparency so parents / carers know exactly
why Early Help is working with the child’s experience for positive results
during our involvement and to take ownership of the exit plan.
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- Are you nervous about
using technology?
- Are
you confused by all the terms?
- Do
you want to understand more about some of the key technology we use?
If you
answered yes to any of the above, a series of digital days are being offered,
specifically for staff in Children's Services who would like to increase their
understanding of ICT and the digital agenda.
Based
on feedback from the previous Children’s Services Health Check, a programme has
been put together to support the needs of staff, covering topics such as:
- Mitel
- Office365
- WorkSMART – How to use the tools available to us to work as effectively as we
can
- LCS/EHM
Each
session will be 45 minutes long, they will be informal and interactive, giving
the opportunity for you and colleagues to ask questions and provide feedback.
Representatives
of the ICT Service Desk will be there working as normal and you will have
direct access to them
Colleagues
from the Business Systems Team to answer any Protocol/ eCAF related
queries
Find
out more and book a place.
Please
ensure you get approval from your line manager before booking onto one of the
sessions.
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Research in Practice
Please make use of this great
website. All social workers need to further their professional development
on a regular basis and this website gives you some great resources. You should
always log on when you use the site so that you can download resources for free
or store items in MyRIP
Did
you know you can keep track of your CPD, bookmark your favourite resources and save
items to read ?
There are CPD, FAVOURITES and READ LATER buttons at the top of all resources and learning events pages.
Click to add the item to the relevant
section in MyRiP and automatically update your brand new CPD log, bookmark items you use often, or store information you want
to come back to later.
If you do not have a log
in, go to https://www.rip.org.uk/
Click on “create an
account” and create your log in using your Coventry email address. Anyone
working in children’s services can use this resource including students in
placements.
Two
of the city’s inspirational young people had the honour of being invited to a
Buckingham Palace garden party in June to celebrate their work with Voices of
Care.
Danielle
May and Jamal Vincent tell us about the day in their own words:
Danielle said: Well what can I
say! Yesterday will not be a day I forget in a hurry! Spent an amazing day with
amazing people.
When I joined the Voices of Care group I never thought I
would end up chairing such an amazing group and meeting so many influential
children, young people and professionals and never thought I would be given the
opportunities I have been given at such a young age!
I have had a blast with the group working on so many
projects with them including filming, interviewing and making positive changes
for the children and young people of Coventry to help make what is a horrible
time in a young person’s life the best it can possibly be! Yesterday was an
amazing day and a brilliant way of bringing my Voices of Care journey to an
end!
It is crazy to think the group has seen me grow up from the
spoilt little kid I was into the woman I am and I could not have done it
without the help of the group which has made me strive more to make many more
changes for not only the young people of Coventry but also the future young
people I will be working with in Sheffield!
I have not made friends in this group, I have made another
family!
Cheers for the best years of my life guys!”
Jamal said:
Had such an amazing day at Buckingham palace yesterday, beautiful
weather and amazing people.
When I first joined the Voices
of Care Council and started working to improve the care system in Coventry
never in my wildest dreams did I think it would take me to the Queens gaff!!
I have been lucky enough to be
part of some amazing pieces of work that impacts on the lives of looked after
children every day. I have met some amazing people over the years, including
people I would have probably never even crossed paths with had it not been for
the work I love to do. I have also had the pleasure to get to know so many
amazing children, who, although they have been through horrendous things and it
seems the world is stacked against them, come with such a positive outlook on
life and so determined to get to where they want to be.
Looked after children are some of the most resilient, genuine and most
deserving young people I have ever worked with. At the same time they are
striving to achieve the same as their peers, all while having to deal with
moving foster placements, constantly reliving their worst experiences with
professionals, having to manage their own money, in some cases looking after a
home of their own at 15/16.
We still live in a society that see's looked after children as "naughty
kids" and judges them before knowing their story. Instead they should be
seen as the strong willed, independent young people who are powering through
adversity to achieve!
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Coventry Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB)
Safeguarding Professionals Survey
“One of the roles of the LSCB is to ensure that the partners
that make up the Board are working together effectively to keep children safe. To
help us do that we want to know about safeguarding practice directly from the
professionals who deliver services to children and families across Coventry.
So, we are inviting practitioners to complete this survey by 12th
July.
"The results will be considered by the Board and used to make decisions
about how services are delivered to improve the way in which organisations
across the city work together to keep children safe. We really want to listen
to your views, and use them to make a difference to children’s lives, so please
take a few minutes to complete this survey.”
David Peplow
Independent Chair, Coventry Safeguarding Children Board
Research study into child neglect
Coventry City Council is participating in a research study with Eleanor Lutman-White from the University of Warwick as part of her PhD degree. The research will explore how decisions are made in child protection conferences. Sam Sharkey and Lee Pardy-Mclaughlin are supporting Eleanor with the research.
This study will focus in particular on child neglect. Neglect is the most commonly recorded type of maltreatment, yet cases involving child neglect are often complex and can be challenging for social workers and other professionals to work with. Every day, decisions are made by professionals working with neglect, however research rarely considers how decisions are made in cases of neglect.
The research will explore the process of discussion and decision-making in a small sample of initial child protection conferences held because of concerns about neglect. In particular, it will examine how the judgements and assessments of social workers and other professionals, as well as the views of family members, affect the process and outcome of the conference.
The findings of this research will provide direct examples and evidence of how the complexities of neglect are managed and how judgements and decisions are made in a multi-professional context. At the end of the research Eleanor will work with Coventry City Council to feed back the findings to professionals.
Eleanor is looking forward to meeting some of you during the course of the research. If you have any questions about the research Eleanor would be very happy to talk to you. She can be contacted on Eleanor.Lutman@warwick.ac.uk
Attachment Theory - Good Practice Guide
This good practice guide, produced by Community Care Inform
provides a useful update and refresher on attachment minded practice with
children, young people and their families. It will be relevant for all our
children’s services practitioners. Please do share in your teams, and take time
to read it yourself.
Learning & Development Updates
Take a look in the Children's Services Learning and Development Portfolio brochure. Current courses include:
- Life Story Training – 12th Sept, 7th Nov 2017
- DVRIM – 4th July
- Prevent Awareness – 15th
June, 20th July, 14th Sep
- Substance Misuse – 9th Aug, 1st Nov
- Court Skills - 25th July
- Court Processes, drafting and pre-proceedings - 24th Aug
Book via Resourcelink or email training@cvoventry.gov.uk
Appraisals - Please make sure you've carried out your staff appraisals by June 30
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Exciting developments with social work student
placements
Student Unit
As a part of the move towards developing a Social Work Academy, Anne
Winn is coordinating a Student Unit which provides a programme of 9 workshops
to enhance student’s development whilst on placement. The programme reflects
the child’s journey, embedding learning aligned to the Knowledge and Skills
Statements and offers an opportunity for students to critically reflect on
their practice and share their learning from their placement settings across
the service.
At the start of this initiative in September 2016, Senior
Practitioners, Natasha Stirling and Laura Bass were involved in the design and
development of the workshops. From February for the new student intake, Natasha
has provided key input around understanding thresholds; working in partnership
with families and looking at lessons from SCRs.
Senior Practitioner, Laura Hooper, Team Manager, Louise
Paterson and University Lecturer, Luke Tibbits have provided lively,
interactive and informative workshops in: Direct Work with Children,
Undertaking Assessments and Linking Theory to Practice. Most recently Xandra Gilchrist and Dhirendra
Shrivastava provided a packed and passionate journey around how crucial the
role of foster carers is in providing the caring environment for children to
flourish and our role in supporting them in this.
Students have commented that the workshops have been a great
opportunity to meet together and discuss the challenges of social work
practice, sharing ideas about different ways to support families. “The
workshops have been fantastic at giving us time with experienced practitioners
to learn new skills and reflect on our practice”. The focus has been on
students actively participating in the sessions, providing valuable group
learning and support during, what can be, a very challenging period in a
student’s preparation for a career in social work.
Think Ahead
Another exciting development has been our contribution to
the ‘Think Ahead’ programme that is running in Coventry’s Adult Services. This
a fast track programme to train social work graduates to become mental health
social workers. The 4 students on the Coventry programme have been provided
with contrasting 30 day placements within our Referral and Assessment Team and
North East Children and Families First Team. It is has been very successful in
building a better understanding and encouraging a closer working relationship
between Children’s and Mental Health services. The students have found this a
really valuable experience. One student commented: "This placement has really given me a great insight
into Children’s work to inform my work in mental health”.
Coaching
John Gregg writes:
Now the Ofsted inspection is over, I’m feeling calm and
reflective. Do I have the energy to keep up the pace that has taken us this far
on the journey of improvement? Yes of course I do! I am more confident than
ever, plus I feel a moral imperative to provide the best life chances to every
single child and young person that we serve. I don’t know what I would have
done without my Coach, Sarah, who has helped me to stay strong and resilient
through some turbulent times in Coventry. I must reconnect with her to help me
with this next phase of the journey.
Having a Coach is actually pretty cool. Talking things
through with Sarah has enabled me to be clear about my future development needs
and direction. On an individual level it has enabled me to further develop my leadership skills, and increase my confidence in these areas. On an
organisational level I've been able to complete complex management tasks with
greater ease and confidence. I really feel like I was stretched by Sarah and
now have so many new ways of thinking about doing things. I actually sat and
jotted down loads of notes in my car after the session so I didn't forget them
after I saw her last. Anyway, I am meeting with Sarah again in the next couple
of months.
I remember not being totally convinced about Coaching
when I first had some information about it, but I’m sold on it now!. It’s okay
to ask for help to address a challenge or even just a dilemma that is swirling
around and nagging through that little voice in the head. Professional coaching
brings many wonderful benefits: fresh perspectives on personal challenges,
enhanced decision-making skills, greater interpersonal effectiveness, and
increased confidence. And, the list does not end there.
If you are a Children’s Services Leader and interested to
know more about Coaching, contact Palvinder Kudhail on Palvinder.kudhail@coventry.gov.uk
New Courses for Foster Care Learning and Development
The
Foster Care Learning and Development Portfolio has been updated for 2017 and
includes some great new courses.
The
Portfolio shows all the aims and outcomes for the sessions and how to book.
Some
of the new dates are for Life Story Work, Prevent Awareness and Substance
Abuse. There are some new e-learning packages for Equality & Diversity and
Behaviour Management.
New courses for
2017-2018 Portfolio is in planning stage currently and courses will be added
throughout the next few months
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Get in touch
Email gareth.lewis@coventry.gov.uk with your updates, comments or suggestions.
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