About Take Your Place
SESLIP has developed this programme to support future leaders in Children’s Social Care, Education, SEND, Early Help and other aspects of children’s services. It is supported as Project #5 in the 2025-2026 SESLIP Regional Improvement Plan.
What is Take your Place? The programme is made up of a range of flexible learning opportunities for leaders and managers who may be interested in moving to more senior roles. This includes experiential learning, workshops and other opportunities. Participants are free to pick and choose which elements they would like to take part in.
Who is it for? It is open to people who want to progress to more senior roles and also those who would like to improve their leadership skills. Our market research for setting up this programmme identified considerable ambivalence about applying for senior roles in our current workforce (less than 40% of those asked had active plans to apply).
How much do the training courses cost? All are free at the point of access and have been paid for by your authority as part of their SESLIP subscription. We may ask authorities to help us prioritise applicants if course become oversubscribed.
Take Your Place Leadership Development Programme 2025
This is a free to access CPD leadership programme for third tier managers. Last year, the course started with a residential on 24th and 25th February 2025, followed by in person workshops on 7th April and 13th May 25 and a final session on 2nd July 2025. The sessions were held in Reading at venue with good public transport links. Each SESLIP large authority had two places and small authorities a single place (we will also take names for reserves as last year not all authorities took up their full allocation). Your final nominations need to be endorsed by your DCS and details sent to mark@markevansconsulting.co.uk.
How did SESLIP decide what to include in Take Your Place?
In late 2019 we commissioned a piece of research. The report helped us to develop an understanding of the demographics and development needs of future leaders of children’s services in the South East. We recognise that we may future potential future leaders have reservations about applying for senior roles. These concerns relate to combination of pull factors (e.g. wanting to stay close to the frontline) and push factors (e.g. not understanding the role of senior officers, the political interface etc). Take Your Place is designed to give participants the opportunity to explore these issues with current children’s services leaders and expert partner organisations. The report was the first stage of the development of the programme. We are continuing to improve it based on feedback from alumni. We are also interested to hear your views about what we should include in the programme in future. Please contact Mark Evans (details opposite).