Principal Children and Families Social Worker network meeting 04 - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Principal Children and Families Social Worker network meeting 04 September 2019

Welcome & minutes of last meeting Claudia Megele & Carol Sibley National Chair and Vice Chair

Child and Family PSW Network Meeting Chief Social Worker/DfE update September 2019 Isabelle Trowler Chief Social Worker for England Children & Families

DfE policy and programme updates: April – September 2019 • New Secretary of State: The Rt Hon Gavin Williamson CBE MP was appointed Secretary of State for Education on 24 July 2019 • New Ministers appointed in the Department for Education • Spending Review : For 2020-21, the Government will be focussed on providing early certainty and stability though a fast-tracked Spending Round ahead of a full Spending Review next year • Funding announcement: For 2020-21, LAs will have access to £1bn additional funding for social care services. This can be used flexibly by local authorities to deliver both adults and children's social care. This is on top of the existing £410m grant in 2019-20 for both adult and children’s social care, which will also continue • Local Authority funding : The Government is working closely with local authorities and the wider sector to develop a thorough understanding of children’s services’ costs and pressures (Review of Relative Needs and Resources)

Practitioners updates – Practice, support for families and programmes with LAs Nuffield Family Justice Observatory ‘Review of Special Guardianship’ published in August 2019 The review calls for a number of changes, including: • Skills and knowledge of children’s social workers in family placement must be prioritised • An increased focus on working with family members who might become long-term carers for the child before care proceedings commence and using Family Group Conferences • Ensuring that any prospective special guardian has direct experience of caring for the child before making a Special Guardianship Order • Ensuring that support services are available locally • Statutory minimum level of preparation and training for prospective special guardians • Further research on young peoples’ views and experiences of special guardianship

NAAS updates and next steps • Second phase of delivery with representation from each regional area • 56 local authorities and Trusts are onboard • Feedback has been positive • Almost 600 social workers have taken the assessment with over 80% of these achieving accreditation • Almost 20 PSWs have taken the assessment via the PSW network route, with two more dates scheduled for October Social Work England • SWE published a set of professional standards in July Supporting Families • Launched the Supporting Families: Investing in Practice programme in May • £15 million provided to test innovation projects to help keep families together • A proportion of the £15m to fund the creation or extension of 15 Family Drug and Alcohol Courts, and support 24 local authorities to introduce Family Group Conferencing at pre-proceedings • Applications from LAs for the Mockingbird Family model are currently begin assessed

The evidence base What Works Centre Updates • WWCSC is engaging with 112 local authorities and working in partnership with 78 • Early findings from research project testing different models of social workers in schools - positive experiences so far • Testing Schwartz Rounds as a way of bringing people together, to share stories about social work and themselves, and to listen to others doing the same • New pilot project devolving budgets to social workers to allow them to find creative solutions to family problems • Practice in Need of Evidence (PINE) programme – working with social care organizations to create evidence about what is already working in practise • 8 partnerships announced in July

National Safeguarding Panel Our first year of operation July 2018 – June 2019 • The Panel decides whether to commission national reviews of child safeguarding cases. Decisions are based on identifying improvements from cases which are complex or of national importance. • The Panel will be responsible for supervising reviews it commissions and timely progress is made. • The Panel has its own statutory powers, independent of Government and can make its own decisions.

Our first year of operation: Serious Incident Notifications: numbers and ages of children Serious incident notifications by age  Highest proportion of notifications (32.4%) relate to children under age 1  Age 6 to 10 under-represented in comparison to other relevant age groups (7.2%) Serious incident notifications by gender  Highest proportion of notifications relate to males (53%); females almost 10pp lower

Serious Incident Notifications (SIN): placement type and ethnicity % Ethnicity 1% Other Asian 1% Other Black 2% Other Ethnicity 2% Other Mixed 5% Other White 1% Brit-Bangladeshi 0% Brit-Chinese 1% Brit-Indian 2% Brit-Pakistani 4% Brit-African 3% Brit-Caribbean 1% Mixed Asian White 2% Mixed African White 2% Mixed Caribbean White 6% Not declared 63% White British 0% White Irish 4% Unknown

Serious Incident Notifications: on a CPP plan Serious incident notifications where a child was on a child protection plan  The highest proportion of notifications (45%) stated that the child had not been on a child protection plan

Our first national review: adolescents in need of state protection from criminal exploitation • We have seen a growing number of serious incidents involving adolescents who have died or been seriously harmed as a result of criminal exploitation. • Our first national review is exploring if adolescents in need of State protection from criminal exploitation get the help they need when they need it. Review Question : Do adolescents in need of State protection from criminal exploitation get the help they need, when they need it? How can the services designed to keep adolescents safe from criminal exploitation, and the way those services work together, be improved to prevent further harm?

Spending review 2020 and beyond: what’s next? From DfE tracking of Ofsted outcomes

What’s next? • Where should DfE be focusing its energy in terms of improving children’s social care? • What should we do next? • What do you think the governments role should be moving forward?

Break

A National Project on Social Work Leadership: New Models, Methods and Projects Dr Jason Schaub @JasonHSchaub Lecturer in Social Work - University of Birmingham

Outline  Why me?  Why you?  Why here?  Why this topic?  What is missing?

Why me?  Developed a new Centre for Health & Social Care Leadership  This raised the difference / disparity in discussions about leadership in health professions and social work  Developed project – Leadership in Social Work

Why this Topic?  Even with many leadership frameworks available there remains an opportunity to strengthen what is understood about social work leadership.  Social workers often feel disempowered and anxious in practice, and most do not recognise themselves as leaders or feel confident to lead.  There can be ambivalence around leadership in frontline practice with pervasive issues of fear and blame that erect psychological barriers for practitioners.

UoB’s Leadership in SW Project 1. Working Paper ‘Leadership in Social Work (and can it learn from clinical healthcare?)’ 2. Led to roundtable with senior SW leaders (Chief SWer; PSW; ADASS; SWE, etc) 3. Further publications – blog, conceptual article 4. Funded PhD studentship examining SW leadership

Leadership & Social Work  Leadership in social work is poorly defined  However, the importance of effective leadership has been highlighted by a range of scholars and reports  The context of contemporary social work can be understood as inhibiting the development of confident and effective leadership  Limited attention to leadership in social work education

Context of Social Work  SW is a varied and complicated profession  Context is often described as perpetually changing

Contextual Challenges  Working in a politically-led organisation  Effect of inspections and SCRs on leadership  Recruitment and retention issues  Budget reductions with increased demands

Clinical Leadership  Clinicians (and in particular doctors and nurses) have had central influence on NHS since 1948  Numerous policy and professional initiatives to encourage / strengthen formal and informal clinical leadership  Despite some progress, clinical leadership remains patchy and formal roles can extremely challenging

What is Missing?  Definition of SW Leadership  Leadership knowledge – practical, – conceptual – research (empirical)  Understanding what social work-specific leadership looks like

 Leadership in social work is poorly defined with no consistent model or definition used in the UK and wider.  Knowledge base is mostly conceptual and lacks a robust empirical basis  SW Education infrequently teaches leadership skills to SWers