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‘Ch – ch- ch – ch – changes...
Time to face the strange’
Who doesn’t love David Bowie?
Devon County Council has restructured its Leadership Team in
Children’s Services to strengthen locality working and build strengths-based, partnership
practice to better manage need, complexity and risk in the community. We
have appointed our four Locality Directors.
We are in tough times and we are all doing more with less. Our strength and resilience comes from
working together and using our collective resources to achieve optimal impact,
hence the focus on capacity building in localities.
To ensure nowhere in the county goes rogue, (which is the
risk with this model) each Locality Director also takes whole county
responsibility for an area of practice.
South: Andrea
Morris - Disabled
Children
Exeter: Rachel
Gillott* - Early Help, MASH
and REACH
Mid and East: Karen
Morris - Children in Care
and Care Leavers
North: Marian
Martin - Child Protection,
FDAC and EDS
See
structure chart.
Reporting to each Locality Director are Area Managers: one
for early help and one for children’s social work. Partners
in the locality should have these on speed dial (if you don’t already).
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South - Lisa
Jackson** (CSW), Karen Hayes (EH)
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Exeter - Jenny-Ellen
Scotland (CSW), Stephen Matthewman (EH)
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Mid and East - Fran
Giblin (CSW), Ian Flett (EH)
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North - Clara
Keegan (CSW), Sarah Simpson (EH)
Some areas of work will not be managed by the Locality
Directors and remain under the leadership of Countywide Senior Managers for
Safeguarding and Fostering and Adoption (Fostering, Adoption, Youth Offending Service, Atkinson and the
Independent Reviewing Unit).
Dawn Stabb, Deputy Chief Officer and Head of Education and
Learning will provide strategic leadership of early help, in that way ensuring
education and early help are fully joined up.
The changes will be
operational from 1 April 2017*
*The timing of Rachel’s start date is subject to discussion
as there are major projects underway in Adoption and Fostering.
**Lisa is acting into the area manager role, permanent
recruitment is planned to commence.
The Council has also appointed
Mark Lines as the Deputy Chief Officer and Head of Children’s Social Work and
Child Protection. Mark starts Monday 8
May and there will be a two week induction/handover with Vivien, the
interim post-holder.
Mark will line-manage the Locality Directors and through
them the Area Managers for children’s social work and early help and has
responsibility for ensuring standards or practice continue to improve across
the County.
We are also finalising the role of Head of Commissioning.
This completes the
planned reconfiguration of senior leadership in Children’s Services.
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