I was lucky enough to attend the recent Signs of Safety Leadership Day held in London with Neil Macdonald and Lee Pardy-MclaughlIn.

Guest speakers included Eileen Munro (right), Viv Hogg (Head of Signs of Safety UK) and Terry Murphy (International Director Signs of Safety).

There were some really interesting discussions around Signs of Safety and excellent opportunities to network with colleagues from across the UK.

I took some good learning from the event including -

"Signs of Safety is not solely 'another' assessment framework, it's a whole organisational transformation process, including changing the organisations culture, systems, practice and interconnected policies." (Viv Hogg)

"Signs of Safety Implementation needs 100% commitment from Senior Leadership through to Practice Leads, who have a responsibility to drive good practice and learning throughout the service." (Terry Murphy)

Eileen Munro focussed on Ofsted. "What do Ofsted want?' verses 'What do social workers want?'. Compliance v Quality. How can we bring both of these together using Signs of Safety?"

As a result of recent discussions at the Improvement Board, it has been agreed that Coventry will accelerate it's Signs of Safety training. It has been recognised that the current training provision has been excellent, however more and more children's services practitioners are asking to be trained. At the moment the demand far exceeds the current provision. As such, there has been a significant push to increase the training provision to enable all children's services practitioners to have attended a level of Signs of Safety training by March 2019.

There are now extra 2 and 1 day training events organised until March 2019. Alongside this, there will be 3 weeks (November, December, January) where 1/2 day training events will take place morning and afternoon. I am truly grateful to the Practice Leads who have kindly volunteered to support the facilitation of these extra training events as we would have struggled without your commitment. Please go to the link below to book on if you haven't already. There will be a 5 Day Practice Leads training event being held in Coventry in March 2019. If anyone is interested in becoming a Signs of Safety Practice Lead and the responsibilities which go alongside this, please speak to your line manager.

Book your place.

I'm very pleased to announce that Joanne Woodfield has been temporarily moved across to support the accelerated Signs of Safety training provision. Jo is one of the Accredited Trainers and brings heaps of knowledge, experience of using Signs of Safety and ideas. Jo will be working alongside myself in coordinating, facilitating and driving good practice throughout Coventry children's services. Welcome Jo :)

Is Signs of Safety making a difference with the children and families we are working with?

How can we measure the impact?

Are audits capturing feedback from families?

Here in Coventry, we are at the stage whereby we have been using Signs of Safety as the overarching assessment framework for a number of years. As part of our journey using the model, I would like to measure the impact Signs of Safety is having with the people we are working with and supporting.

Therefore I would like to create an evaluation form which we can use with children and families which captures their experience of Signs of Safety. I will also be developing a 'case audit' tool which can be used in measuring practitioners use of Signs of Safety within their day to day practice.

Research (Coram Voice 2015) tells us that children who are subject to 'Child Protection' systems or 'Looked After', often feel confused about why they aren't living with parents or why they have safety plans at home.

Words and Pictures is therefore an excellent tool to use with children and parents in offering the children an explanation of what is going on for them. It takes trust and time to complete a good words and pictures explanation however the results for the children are profound. It relieves a child's worries, anxiety, anger and guilt and enables the child to come to terms with what is happening for them.

There are some excellent examples of words and pictures on the Signs of Safety website or in the workbook, however above is a super example from Jo Woodfield. There will be some workshops organised in the coming months which will offer some tips and learning around creating these.

Please don't forget to send me good examples of Signs of Safety practice as there is some fantastic work being completed out there.

Showcase and celebrate the good work we do!