UPDATE NO 209 19 August 2016

Action research into improvement in local children’s services: Regional workshops

Heather Wills of the Local Government Association(LGA) has written 

“We would like to invite political leaders and senior officers from your local area to a regional workshop to discuss the enablers of and barriers to improvement in local children’s services. Lead Members, Chief Executives, Directors of Children’s Services and Assistant Directors of Children’s Social Care are warmly invited to attend.

“In June this year, the LGA published research by Isos Partnership that focused on identifying the enablers of and barriers to improvement in local children’s services. The report identified a number of key practical messages about how local areas can drive and sustain improvement in local children’s services. The full report can be read here, and the practical summary for lead members and senior leaders is available here.

“One of the most productive aspects of the research was bringing leaders from different local areas together to share how they were solving problems, addressing issues and driving improvement in their local children’s services. For this reason, to disseminate the learning from this research and facilitate leaders from a wider range of local areas to share practice with one another, the LGA is supporting a series of four regional workshops across the county. These will take place during the autumn of 2016.”

The aims of the workshops are to:

• share the learning from Isos’ research and enable local areas to explore and discuss themes and messages from the report that are relevant to their circumstances;
• create opportunities for local areas to share their priorities and learning with their peers, and enable dialogue about the opportunities for improvement; and
• create networks of improvement across each region based around common challenges that might be sustained after the workshop.

There will be a mixture of plenary inputs and small group discussions, facilitated by the colleagues from Isos who led the research. There will be lots of opportunities for active engagement from those attending, as well as more informal peer-to-peer learning and networking.

The regional workshops will take place on the following dates at the following locations and all begin at 10.30am:

• London – Monday 17 October (Local Government House, SW1P 3HZ)
• Taunton – Wednesday 19 October (Corner House Hotel, TL1 4DQ)
• Birmingham – Tuesday 8 November (De Vere Colmore Gate, B3 2QD)
• Manchester – Wednesday 9 November (Britannia Hotel, M1 3LA)

This event will be free to attend – there will be no charge for attendance.

If you would like to attend, we would be grateful if you could respond to karen.denyer@local.gov.uk Tel: 0207 664 3343 at the LGA by Friday 23 September.  

Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis so please apply as soon as possible. More than one colleague from each local area is welcome to attend – we would be grateful if you could let us know the names and roles of those colleagues who wish to attend.

If you would like to discuss the content of the workshops in further detail, please contactsimon.rea@isospartnership.com or clive.harris@local.gov.uk

You can download the flyer here

Self Evaluation Framework 2016

The South East ADCS meeting approved a Self Evaluation Framework including a strong element of Peer Challenge.

The SEF process is open to all local authorities/children’s services trusts in the south east who choose to sign the Memorandum of Understanding. Thanks to Southampton for signing and returning theirs.

The training/orientation sessions have been moved from September to November to allow colleagues a bit more lead time. Please reserve either 2 or 11 November (at Easthampstead Park Conference Centre). More details about who should attend which day at the Self Evaluation Framework 2016 page. 

Work is underway to secure participants’ commitment and to identifying those who wish to be “hosts” in the first round. Brighton and Hove and Southampton have joined Portsmouth as volunteers to undertake the self-evaluation. Milton Keynes, West Sussex and Windsor and Maidenhead have offered themselves as observers this year. I look forward to receiving further responses very soon – see table below.

As you can see we are not attempting to achieve full coverage in this, the first year of this process. We are looking forward to getting feedback and guidance from these early participants before even considering a comprehensive roll-out.

The template for the Self Evaluation Framework 2016 is available here

For a further discussion about the programme please contact Richard Tyndall (details below) in the first instance.

SEND Benchmarking Workshop

The next SEND benchmarking workshop will be held in Crawley Library on Friday 30 September (10-3). Here is the March 2016 SEND databenchmarking commentary. Here is the pdf version of the 2015-16 Annual SEND benchmarking data report and here is the excel version.

For more information, please contact Tracey Maytas or Alastair Lee (details below)

Topical Peer Challenge Round 9

Topical Peer Challenge Round 9 has now closed with seven participants (some carried over from Round 8):

Bracknell Forest (LSCB) 26&27 January 2017; Kent (Adolescent Support Teams and Edge-of-Care Work) dates tba; Medway (CiN) November tbc; Portsmouth (CSE) 28&29 November 2016; Southampton (tbc); West Sussex (MASH) dates tba; Windsor and Maidenhead (Corporate Parenting) 14&15 November 2016.

The planning grid is begining to fill up with confirmed names and dates. I look forward to receiving further confirmations from colleagues involved.

I am also recruiting volunteers who would like to go on my “reserve list” of potential Peer Challenge visitors that I can call on to fill vacancies on the planned grid. If you would like to be considered for this list, please contact Richard Tyndall (details below)

The team to visit Portsmouth in November is now complete: thank you to Alison Alexander, Amanda Radley, Lilian Dickinson and Yvonne Kapungu for offering their time. The teams to visit Windsor and Maidenhead in November and Bracknell Forest in January are taking shape: thank you to Pinaki Ghoshal, Naintara Khosal and Mary Blanchard; and Alison Jeffery, Ann Domeney and Deborah Maynard for offering their time.

Leadership Development

The one-to-one coaching programme took a new booking last week.

We continue to offer our successful portfolio of Leadership Development Courses all of which have been positively evaluated by delegates.

This year we have added a new course recently piloted in Hampshire and IoW. The senior team attended a one-day Coaching to Improve Performance workshop to ensure the Directorate were fully conversant with the training undertaken by their three cohorts of managers on two-day programme and to develop their own coaching skills to use in their own performance management roles.

We are also offering LAs the opportunity to train their own trainers for all our courses. Our aim is to increase the capacity and capability across the region  to ensure future sustainability within LAs.

A new departure for us has been running these training courses for adult services and for schools so please contact Di Smith, details below, if this is of interest to you. 

All courses are run in-house in the LA who provides the venue. Each course is accompanied by a range of training resources for the delegates including a comprehensive handbook. The current courses on offer are as follows and details of each course and the costs for each can be found by downloading the April 2016 Leadership Development Prospectus. 

Coaching to Improve Performance

Embedding a Coaching Culture

Leading Change in Times of Austerity

Step Up to Leadership   

We can also arrange one-to-one coaching, especially to support newly appointed 2nd and 3rd tier managers

If you require further details or wish to book a course please get in touch with Di Smith (contact details below)