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Children's Services Brief: June

Directorate Updates

Message from Catherine Driscoll, Director of Children's Services

Welcome to our new monthly brief, which contains the latest information across our directorate. Please discuss latest updates within your team briefs and if you have any questions, please use Ask Children Services on our CPP website. This is where you can raise any issues or pose a question about anything to do with the directorate. Queries raised and answered will be anonymised and posted on this page, so all staff are aware of the questions and queries being raised.

Read more from Catherine.

Monthly Virtual Briefing

On the first Monday of every month, Director of Children’s Services Catherine Driscoll, with Service Directors Andrea Stone and Helen Ellis, host a monthly briefing.

Please find a recording of the session that took place on Monday 6 June attached here. 

Our next briefing will take place at 9:15 a.m. on Monday 4 July. It is difficult to find a time that works for everyone and so the session will be recorded to accommodate those who need to attend a panel. A Microsoft Teams invitation will be circulated to all staff in due course.

Announcements

Children’s – Liquidlogic (EHM and LCS), Portals ContrOCC will not be available during upgrade

What is happening?

Liquidlogic Portals (professional and delegation) will be unavailable from Tuesday 14 June at 12pm. 

Liquidlogic (EHM and LCS)/ContrOCC will be unavailable from Wednesday 15 June at 8am.

We plan for the system to be available again from Friday 17 June at approx.1pm, however, if the system is available is earlier, we will notify you.  An email will be sent to confirm when the Children’s Liquidlogic/ContrOCC systems are available.  Please do not attempt to login during downtime. 

This is due to essential maintenance - an upgrade is required to support the implementation of the Provider Portal. 

Is there a contingency?

There will be a Read Only version of EHM and LCS which will be available before the system is taken offline. This can be accessed via the Successor Support SharePoint site. Work is ongoing to define what forms will be needed for manual recording whilst the system is down.

There is no Read Only for ContrOCC, but documentation will be provided to support the business ahead of the downtime.

If you have any queries refer to the Successor Support SharePoint site, which will be updated as we progress the Major Version Upgrade. Or, discuss this with your line manager.

Share our successes, share our job vacancies

We would like to encourage all staff to share our messages and job vacancies via their own social medial channels. We are committed to getting the right people for the right jobs and we want our reach to go far and wide. Please help us share our journey.

Our social media accounts are:

Twitter: @Dudleymbcjobs @CPPdudley @dudleymbc

Facebook: @DudleyBorough

Instagram: dudleymbc

LinkedIn: Dudley Council

Our jobs microsite can be found at: https://www.childrenservicesjobs-dudley.org.uk/

Latest News

Jubilee Commemorative Book

You may have recently seen media coverage relating to each child in state funded primary education receiving the gift of a Queen’s Platinum Jubilee commemorative book. Distribution of this via schools will begin in mid-May and be completed before the end of the academic year. 

We have had a few queries about whether children in home education will also receive this gift.  

While children at independent schools and those in elective home education will not receive this book, it will be available for private purchase via online and high street booksellers from 23 June 2022. A digital version of the book will also be available, at no charge to readers, from September.

Later Life Planning

Plan your best older life. All Children’s Services employees are invited to attend 30-minute face-to-face or virtual sessions with people from the Healthy Ageing Team in Public Health to look at changes you can make now to improve your later years. Aimed especially at those aged 45+, you will also be given a Later Life Planning document to take home and use to plan your future.

You can arrange an introduction session to the Later Life Planning resource with Karen or a member of the Healthy Ageing team.  You can either email Karen McCrone or telephone 01384 816437 or 01384 814430.

Infant Mental Health Awareness Week

This year’s Infant Mental Health Awareness Week theme is ‘Understanding Early Trauma’, focused on babies whose mental health is most at risk. ​The First 1001 Days of an infant's life lay the foundations for a happy and healthy future. For more information on Infant Mental Health Awareness Week and the F1001D visit Connect. 

Supporting Local Families

Help make a difference to families in Dudley borough. Exciting volunteering opportunities are available across the five borough family centres. Find out more on Connect.

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Dudley Council and Ideas Alliance have worked with clients from Queen’s Cross Network to put together a personal photographic account of their pandemic experiences. At the same time, Dudley residents and groups were asked to quilt a square depicting their stories of Covid-19; these have now been made into a wall hanging. The project has been commissioned to ensure that people’s lived experiences of Covid-19 contribute to our learning from the pandemic and inform our future working practices and priorities and will be fed in to the borough’s new health and wellbeing strategy. Find out more in the attached flyer.

The exhibition can be viewed at: 

Dudley Library Tuesday 7 June to Wednesday 29 June 
Brierley Hill Library Thursday 21 July to Wednesday 10 August 
Stourbridge Library Monday 15 August to Friday 2 September 
Sedgley Library Wednesday 7 September to Wednesday 28 September

For opening times visit the Dudley Libraries website. 

Dudley’s Centre for Professional Practice (CPP) Website – One Minute Guide! 

Attached is your One Minute Guide to help you navigate the CPP website and find all of the documents you need to support your practice with children and families.

We hope this guide supports you to use the website! However, if you do have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact us at CPP@dudley.gov.uk.

Restorative Practice

Our vision for a Child Friendly Dudley is built on the foundations and principles of Restorative Practice.

The One Minute Guide to Restorative Practice provides a quick and easy way for us to all understand what restorative practice in Dudley is.

There are things we can all do to drive restorative practice forward in Dudley, the 4 Things That Make a Difference are simple things that we can do that will make a big difference to children and families. Watch this video to learn more.

Upcoming Events:

• Dudley SENDIASS 'All About You' series
• Workshops and Events for young people with SEND

Available Training:

• Understanding Children's Mental Health and Wellbeing

• CPP Training Programme
• Childhood Adversity and Trauma Informed Practice Training
• Solihull Approach Professional Courses