Surrey Family Resilience Service Workforce Development Strategy 2019 -2020

ContentsIntroduction..................................................................................................................3National Context..........................................................................................................4Local Context...............................................................................................................5Surrey Family Resilience Services – the vision and aim of the strategy......................5Scope..........................................................................................................................7Recruiting and retaining a workforce of knowledgeable and skilled professionals......8Teams for the Future...................................................................................................8Developing a Resilient Workforce...............................................................................9Creating Opportunities.................................................................................................9Duty of Care................................................................................................................9Surrey Children’s Services Academy (SCSA)...........................................................10Workforce/SCSA Development Objectives................................................................13Learning, Training and Development........................................................................15Safeguarding children and young people..................................................................15Embedding effective partnership working..................................................................16Embedding a learning environment...........................................................................16Robust Supervision...................................................................................................16Supporting accreditation of our workers....................................................................18Examples of Continuous Professional Development Pathways................................19Leadership and Management....................................................................................19Monitoring and Review of this strategy......................................................................20Related documents....................................................................................................20

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Introduction

Surrey County Council’s Children’s Services and their partners have been on a transformation journey following two previous ‘inadequate’ Ofsted judgements. This journey will ensure that children and families receive the support that they need when they need it which requires the whole workforce to be competent and confident in delivering the services they are responsible for.

We want to attract skilled individuals who are proud to work in Surrey for and with our children and families and in order to do that we need to ensure that it is a place where they can develop their skills and where they have further opportunities and where they feel supported by their managers and senior managers.

This workforce strategy outlines some of those key changes and how, through the creation of the Surrey Children’s Services Academy (SCSA), through greater opportunities for collaborative learning events and by embedding a culture of learning in the organisation and across the partnership we propose to develop the skills and confidence of staff in order to better meet the needs of families and equipping those families to become more resilient in meeting the needs of their children.

To this end the Surrey Children’s Services Academy is being built to Recruit, Develop and Retain an outstanding and Resilient Children’s Workforce through joined up Blended Learning to support building the resilience of our communities.

This strategy outlines our vision and aims and some of the key activities we will be pursuing in achieving this vision. It is not so prescriptive as to stifle innovative thinking and new models developing but it is underpinned by key principles that will ensure that Surrey is a place where people want to live and work and raise their children.

Commitment to recruit excellent staff including social workers at all levels runs through the Academy, this will include the use of Safer Recruitment Procedures, as well as integrating service user involvement at all levels.

In order to become outstanding, important organisational and cultural changes are required which need to be achieved with consistency, pace and ambition to ensure that timely decision are made for children and that good outcomes are achieved. This will require a system, which ensures that the workforce and culture is robust, competent, and reflective and is steeped in Family Safeguarding practice, knowledge

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and wisdom.

The Surrey Children’s Services Academy is a virtual Academy. It draws together recruitment, professional development and retention within a “faculty” structure. The Surrey Children’s Services Academy enables Surrey to demonstrate its commitment to its employees in support of excellent outcomes for children and families.

National ContextThe context nationally for Children’s Social Care is one of increased pressure from decreasing resources and increasing numbers of referrals for support. In a report requested by the House of Commons and published in January 2019, the National Audit Office outlined these pressures:

Activity: Referrals to children’s social care increased by 7%1

Child protection assessments increased by 77%2

26% increase in the number of children made subject to child protection plans 2% rise in child in need episodes between 2010-11 and 2017-18 The number of children taken into care has risen by 15% The number of children over the age of 16 taken into care has risen by 78%

Resources: Local authorities have seen their overall real spending power reduce by 28.6%

since 2010. The proportion of spending on preventative services, such as children’s centres,

fell from 41% in 2010-11 to 25% in 2017-18. Spending on statutory activities rose from 59% to 75% over the same period 91% of Children’s Services authorities overspent on their budget in 2017-18

1 “Referrals to children’s social care increased in line with population growth between 2010-11 and 2017-18. The number of referrals to children’s social care increased by 7% between 2010-11 and 2017-18, to 655,630. Over the same period the 0–17 population of England experienced broadly similar growth, increasing by 5.2%. The increase in the number of children in need episodes between 2010-11 and 2017-18 was actually below population growth, with these rising by only 2%, from 735,470 to 753,840. A child is recognised as being in need under the Children Act 1989 if they need local authority services to achieve or maintain a reasonable state of health or development; to prevent significant or further harm; or because they are disabled. A “children in need episode” is where a referred child meets this definition (paragraph 1.16 and Figures 1 and 5).”

2 Between 2010-11 and 2017-18 referrals increased by 7% while child protection assessments increased by 77%. Although initial referrals to local authorities increased by only 7% over the period from 2010-11 to 2017-18, local authorities carried out 77% more child protection assessments. It is not clear if the disproportionate increase in assessments is because of lower risk thresholds applied by authorities, a change in the nature of referrals made, or other factors. The number of cases where authorities consider actual harm or neglect to have been demonstrated (marked by the introduction of a child protection plan when an authority first commits targeted resources to support a child) was much lower than the rise in assessments, increasing by only 26%[…]”.

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£8.0 billion was budgeted nationally for 2017-18 and this was overspent by £872 million

£8.6 billion was budgeted nationally for 2018-19

“The Department for Education (the Department) provides statutory guidance on delivering these functions… [and]… has overall policy responsibility for children’s services, and has the strategic vision that all vulnerable children, no matter where they live, should have access to high-quality support by 2022.”3

Local ContextSurrey County Council’s (SCC’s) Organisational Strategy sets out how the Council will work with residents and partners and direct its resources to where they will have the most impact to deliver the Community Vision for Surrey. The corresponding Financial Strategy and Transformation Programme will not only secure the Council’s financial sustainability but will also transform the function, form and focus of the organisation.

As part of this strategic agenda, ‘Our People 2021’ is our plan for the workforce of SCC (current and future). Our staff are our ambassadors and are crucial to successful delivery of the Organisational Strategy and consequently, achievement of the ambitions for Surrey as set out in the Vision.

Our People 2021 sets out how we will develop the capacity and capability of our workforce to achieve our priority strategic outcomes for Surrey residents, ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the Council, create a high performance culture and drive wholesale transformational change.

One of the key indicators for success of our Corporate Workforce Strategy specifically for Children’s Services is the recruitment and retention of social workers and reducing the number of agency social workers.

Surrey Family Resilience Services – the vision and aim of the strategyOur vision is focused on making Surrey an even better place to live for all Children, Young People and their Families; at the heart our vision for Surrey Family Resilience Services is the concept of shared learning across all those employed to work with Children, Young People and their Families in Surrey.

3 Pressures on Children’s Social Care, National Audit Office, Jan 2019

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Our whole-service transformation is supported by a Family Safeguarding-based approach, which provides a solid evidenced based foundation on which to develop our workforce by giving them the opportunity to work as part of a multi-disciplinary service, aimed at supporting parents to change so children can remain living safely within their families.

The Family Safeguarding based approach is rooted in the Children Act 1989 and its commitment to promote the upbringing of children within their families, rather than gathering evidence to remove children into care, providing their care is not causing significant harm to the child’s health or development.

It does so by providing child in need and child protection work on a multi-disciplinary basis where the teams are comprised of children and family social workers, adult substance abuse specialists, adult mental health practitioners and domestic abuse specialists. Together, the team members use Motivational Practice to help parents identify the support they need to improve the care and protection of their children and as much support as possible is provided from within the teams, rather than referring them elsewhere.

To drive this ambition we are changing the way in which we deliver services to children and families by:

Empowering and equipping our workforce to develop the skills to better engage families in changing their behaviour and undertake purposeful interventions with families

Ensuring our organisational culture, systems and tools to support the delivery of high quality child and family interventions

Retaining, attracting and growing a workforce of effective practitioners/staff who are well supported, focused on meeting family needs so children’s lives are improved, curious and inquisitive about what they are seeing and assessing.

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Through this we want to see:

Children and families are more resilient through being supported and challenged by appropriately skilled professionals at the earliest opportunity

A workforce where improvement is a habit and challenges itself to achieve the best for children evidencing impact and proving its worth in its outcomes for families

A partnership of committed professionals who model strong strategic accountability for the vision of Surrey Family Resilience Services and Family Safeguarding based practice.

We value our workforce and recognise that they are our most valuable asset.

This workforce development strategy has been developed to ensure we deliver world-class professional development opportunities to all of our staff, enshrined within a Partnership model and the Surrey Ways of Working and outstanding services to children and families.

The aim of this strategy is to outline key strategic activities to enhance and develop Surrey Family Resilience Service Workforce and is aligned with Surrey County Council’s Corporate Plan, ‘Our People 2021 Workforce Strategy’.

Scope

This strategy is for all staff employed within Surrey Family Resilience Services. Although the strategy focuses on the Social Care teams and other front line teams, there are other teams and Partners who are integral to our Learning and Development Offer and are included within the sphere of activity of this strategy.

This strategy sets out the expectations of our professional development programme (on which we are consulting) and the varied ways we support our workforce to get there. The key to the success of this strategy is to offer learning opportunities in different ways, which will suit different individuals learning styles, the delivery methods include:

Formal learning and development (e.g. training) Informal learning and development (e.g. workshops, seminars and action

learning approaches) Self-directed learning and development.

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Recruiting and retaining a workforce of knowledgeable and skilled professionalsRecruitment and retention is a national issue for children’s social care. Surrey strives to attract and retain the very best candidates, showcasing as an employer of choice by:

Dedicated recruitment micro-site Headline sponsor of key CPD/Recruitment events Tight controls on the use and cost of agency staff Gateway interview and selection procedure

Teams for the FutureA range of initiatives is required to better support and develop teams to deliver high quality, purposeful and resilient services within a Family Safeguarding framework to children and their families in Surrey. Part of this thinking is about how we can reduce workloads in teams within new team structures. We are absolutely committed to creating the best teams and conditions we can for staff to improve and succeed.

One of these measures will be to create smaller social work teams across Surrey. This means aiming wherever possible, to have a ratio of one team manager to six practitioners. This approach, where team managers have responsibility for less cases overall, and where they will understand those cases better will lead to better support for staff, better decision making and better outcomes for families, within our resilience philosophy. “When the sources of pressure are well managed, well-being and performance benefit” (Donald et al 2005, Wright & Cropanzano 2004).

The teams for the future will work within and understand the Family Safeguarding approach within which there is a framework of Motivational Interviewing. All Children’s Services staff will undertake a two day introduction to Motivational Interviewing and will be expected to participate in monthly skills development sessions over a period of several years in order to develop a high degree of skill and better support families. The creation of smaller teams will allow managers to take full advantage of the knowledge and skills they will develop during the reflective and group supervision training sessions that will be rolled out across Family Resilience Services.

Staff will be encouraged to book and hold regular professional development conversations. These discussions will be conducted through the various forums of the SCSA about how we can improve the service and what we need to do to ensure

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that staff across the organisation feel supported and heard.

Developing a Resilient WorkforceIn order to develop the resilience of children and families, we need to ensure that we develop the resilience of our staff.

The development of a resilient workforce is key to retaining workers with the right values and behaviours. It protects the mental health and physical health and wellbeing of the workforce. While at the same time helps them to consistently deliver quality services (“Greater Resilience better care”, Skills for Care, 2015).

Resilience as a philosophy is about thriving and flourishing. It helps workers embrace change, to seek out opportunities for development, to stand up for values and quality in the best interest of children and young people and their families. As an employer Surrey Family Resilience Services has a responsibility to control stress at work.

Creating Opportunities Various opportunities will be developed to encourage staff to join Surrey County Council, including offering apprenticeships, mentoring opportunities and management development, 20 additional places have been offered for social work training for those staff who are not qualified who want to become qualified. These opportunities will be identified through the SCSA and will enable us to create a diverse and skilled workforce.

Duty of CareIt is understood within this strategy that it is an employer’s duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees and other people who might be affected by their business. Employers must do what is reasonably practicable to achieve this (Health and safety Executive: Employers responsibilities).

Through this strategy the foundations will be created to help the workforce in Surrey Family Resilience Services develop behaviours that foster the building of a positive workplace culture and a positive learning environment.

Surrey Children’s Services Academy (SCSA)The SCSA is being introduced in Surrey in order to bring the arrangements relating to the development of Family Resilience Services staff within one place within a clear system. The academy will be the channel for attracting, recruiting, developing and retaining the appropriate staff. The SCSA is fully a partnership Academy and the activities within the Faculties will clearly reflect this.

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The SCSA is overseen by the SCSA Strategic Board, which is chaired by Patricia Denney the Director of QA and a Reference Group, chaired by the Service Manager of the Academy (Lead Consultant currently). Both the Strategic Board and Reference Groups have a membership drawn from across the Partnership. The Strategic Boards is the decision maker. The Academy Reference group supported by a number of project-working groups takes responsibility for the ongoing development activity under the direction of the Strategic Board. The Reference Group and its project-working group and Strategic Board are already up and running.

The SCSA is made up of eight faculties, the value of the faculty approach is that it offers partners employees, social work students, social workers, and otherwise qualified staff, support workers and managers time to learn new skills and hear and learn about recent research away from the stresses of their daily work. Many of these events will have a partnership audience.

The academy introduces a clear and consistent approach to:

Continuous professional development Recruitment of permanent and agency social workers Workforce analysis and action planning Retention Embedding the Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSS) for child and family

practitioners and practice supervisors Understanding of and embedding of social work reforms Progression scheme Induction Student unit NQSW in their Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) Faculties with a focus on best practice across the partnership.

The introduction of the SCSA in September/October 2018 and launched in January 2019 established three priority faculties in November 2018. At the Board Meeting in March it was established that there is an ambition to have all eight faculties operational by December 2019.

Surrey is excellently placed to take full advantage of partnership working with Schools, the Police, Health partners, the Third sector and a range of Universities. We have commissioned a range of resources which will ensure we are able to offer the

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very best, up to date development opportunities across all faculties.

All of our professional development for social workers and social work managers are linked to the Professional Capabilities Framework and increasingly the Knowledge and Skills Statements for Child and Family practitioners ensuring our workforce are well equipped to deal with not only the local context but the national one when undertaking any type of development. This includes learning lessons from SCR’s (Local and National) and the Introduction of Learning Walks (Bokell) as quality assurance measurement of impact and professional development.

Our expectations at Surrey are high and in return for offering an excellent workforce development programme we undertake feedback, regular supervision and we will offer a regular personal development. This will directly contribute to the delivery of best service for children, young people and their families in Surrey.

This vision for professional development forms the basis of the development of the Surrey Children’s Services Academy.

In delivering its objectives the SCSA will, in all its faculties:

Adopt the corporate vision and shared values of Surrey Council’s Strategy Develop a quality assurance strategy which will include Bokell Learning Walks

(BLW) to assess how CPD/learning is being embedded across the Services and the impact CPD/learning activities have on the way our staff engages with people who are Service Users

Develop groups of staff to be Research & Evidence Fellows (REF), in addition the SCSA is developing a strong Partnership College of Trainers both sets of these staff members will be supported by the Learning Tree Group of SCSA and the Service Manager.

Develop and introduce Learning and Evidence Portfolios for staff beyond ASYE in order that they can record and produce evidence of their development for progression.

It is clear that for the required changes to be achieved the organisation needs to clearly articulate its approach to recruitment, retention, career pathways and workforce development. To ensure that those within the workforce and those looking in from outside understand what to expect, we will clearly articulate this is how we operate within Surrey Family Resilience Services. Once articulated, we will deliver consistently on our offer. A draft social work progression paper is currently being

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written by the Lead Consultant of SCSA.

The SCSA helps deliver Surrey Family Resilience Services’ objective of growing practitioners that are well supported, child focused, curious and inquisitive about what they are seeing and assessing. As such the eight faculties of the Academy are aimed across the whole of the service and the Partners in Surrey including alternatively qualified practitioners and support staff.

The SCSA is working to further develop strong internal and external partnerships and is building strong links with a range of Universities including Kingston University (who are the HE partners both in the Teaching Partnership and on the SCSA Board), Research in Practice, Community Care Inform, Care Knowledge and Kent University Centre for CP.

National surveys including those carried out by Community Care (2016) show that retention rates of social workers are higher and staff feel more valued when they have good opportunities to develop their skills, and that staff satisfaction combined with good knowledge and skills leads to better outcomes for children and families. We will therefore be drawing on the views of our staff as the various faculties progress, led by the Lead Coordinators within SCSA, who are managers employed within the Academy.

The social care workforce faces many challenges in the coming years, both National and Local. We believe that the Munro review of child protection is still relevant in which it sets the context for the future, describing a need to move from an overly bureaucratic system to one which puts the safety and needs of children first. Munro’s view is that the social work profession must be provided with the opportunity to ‘draw on research and theoretical models to inform local practice’.

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This is further developed within the DfE report Putting Children First: Our vision for children’s social care, (July 2016). The government plans involve major reform of each of the three pillars on which the children’s social care system stands:

People and leadership – bringing the best into the profession and giving them the right knowledge and skills for the challenging but hugely rewarding work and developing leaders equipped to nurture practice

Practice and systems – creating the right environments for excellent practice and innovation to flourish, learning from the very best practice and from when things go wrong

Governance and accountability – making sure that when we are doing is working and developing innovative new organizational models with the potential to radically improve services.

The SCSA support’s Munro’s view it provides a strong foundation and approach to service delivery in Surrey from a purposeful, robust, confidant and able workforce. The SCSA will also be the vehicle for accomplishing the aims set out within the government paper; including

Embedding the Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSS) for practitioners, supervisors and practice leaders

Using research to ensure our practice and systems are evidence informed, innovative and offer value for money

Linking with others to create innovative and cost effective models of service delivery, for example the Teaching Partnership and the Step up to Social Work Partnership.

Workforce/SCSA Development ObjectivesThese objectives are not exhaustive; however they reflect the areas we believe will make a real difference to the children, young people and their families of Surrey.

Knowledgeable, resilient professional workforce delivering purposeful practice which enables resilient children and families

Meaningful partnership to safeguard children, young people and their families Embed effective partnership working across all services A strong leadership and management team Recruit and retain a workforce of proud, competent professionals

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Link all professional development for social workers and social work managers to the Knowledge and Skills Statements while retaining the Professional Capabilities Framework

Develop a strong focused learning culture across all of the services and partners working with children, young people and their families

Enable the use of performance and quality assurance data to measure impact, evaluate and shape service delivery

Promoting equality and diversity Ensuring the participation of children, young people and families.

Learning, Training and DevelopmentThe workforce development requirements will be achieved by:

Developing robust evidence based mechanisms to ensure learning and training needs for all staff within Surrey’s Family Resilience Service are identified to support the effective provision of current and evolving services.

Commissioning and implementing professional development programmes which meets the identified needs and ensure all staff, at all levels, are suitably equipped to provide excellent services.

Creating systems which enable the workforce to take responsibility for their own continuous learning, quality improvement and effectiveness

Developing our use of the College of Trainers and the REFs Ensuring training providers are working alongside the SCSA and the Workforce

Development Team to provide innovative and bespoke training opportunities that reflect Surrey ’s priorities and provide value for money

Providing leadership development opportunities for all managers and prospective managers to form a robust succession plan

Ensure all staff on joining have an induction and professional development plan/portfolio which can be clearly mapped through supervision, personal development reviews, learning walks and quality assurance measures

Developing the faculties within the Surrey Children’s Services Academy to ensure all of the objectives of the workforce development strategy are being met and impacting positively on practice.

Safeguarding children and young peopleSCSA will ensure that the partners and Surrey’s workforce fully understands their responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people, a function to be taken from Surrey’s Safeguarding Children Board. They will be equipped with the competence, knowledge and skills to identify a child or family’s needs so they can confidently and professionally undertake early intervention

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measures.

Surrey Family Resilience Service Workforce Development Strategy is part of the overall Surrey Council’s workforce development strategy ensuring that the collective workforce of Surrey Council understands their role in the safeguarding of children and young people via induction and the most up to date and relevant training targeted to different professional groups.

Embedding effective partnership workingSurrey Family Safeguarding Service is fully committed to partnership working, this is evident in the considerable investment that has been made by the service. Joint training is available to partners through the SCSA and has already seen multi-agency training delivered to over 2000 professionals across Surrey on the Effective Family Resilience document which establishes the thresholds for intervention.

Embedding a learning environmentOur refreshed practice learning framework and audit approach is integral in supporting and developing our social workers and their managers to understanding what a ‘good’ service looks like and how to achieve it. The team will sit alongside individuals to encourage them to think about the approach they took with a family and how they might have done things differently to achieve a better outcome.

Robust and reflective supervision will be critical in ensuring that staff have further opportunities to explore ways to improve their practice.

Robust SupervisionAlongside our transformation, Surrey County Council has adopted Tri-X for our policies and procedures. This means that we can focus on key policies for staff that will support them in the work they do. Critical to the support for our workforce is the commitment to robust supervision and ensuring that there is management support and understanding of the situations our social workers encounter every day.

The Supervision Policy has been developed collaboratively with staff and the approach will ensure that all children’s cases have regular management oversight; that staff have the opportunity to reflect professionally on a monthly basis; that managers can support those staff to develop new approaches; and that risk can be identified, shared and mitigated against.

Reflective Supervision will be offered on a regular basis in the context of a collaborative relationship, providing opportunities for the individuals involved to reflect

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on hands on work and provide an opportunity to gain an in-depth understanding of a situation, become more aware of their own reactions and responses to the service user, how they intervened and the consequences of their intervention.

This relationship based reflection provides opportunities for ongoing professional self -evaluation. The relationship models that of the social worker with the service user (one which promotes partnership working, and uses motivational interviewing techniques). It aims to create a culture of intellectual enquiry, to promote empathy and support long term professional development.

Sessions incorporate discussion about intervention goals, the process of service delivery, values, reactions and emotions, identification and analysis of pertinent knowledge, risk assessment, use of self and exploration of healthy scepticism.

Supervisees are encouraged to explore other ways of working with a variety of client interventions. These approaches encourage supervisees to become more creative, develops critical thinking and problem solving skills, and their decision-making processes

There will be different types of supervision available:

Case Supervision Individual Staff Supervision Group Case Supervision IRO / CP Chair and LADO Supervision; and Manager Supervision

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Group Supervision will be a multi-disciplinary opportunity to reflect on cases and to better identify the support that is needed for a family.

Manager supervision is a new feature added to our policy and will be a mechanism for supporting and developing our managers in their role as supervisors as well as supervisees and for ensuring that risks are identified and escalated appropriately.

It is through supervision that learning and development needs and opportunities will be identified for our staff. Managers will identify the needs of individuals and of their teams in order to drive further improvements and create the evidence base for our Learning and Development annual programme. These learning needs will be shared with the SCSA to identify and prioritise the most appropriate opportunities within the Learning and Development programme to support the continual professional development of staff.

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Case Supervision

LCS form All children on SW caseload to be reviewed at least every 3 months

Individual Staff

Supervision

Wellbeing Performance and Development formReflective practiceMonthly supervision

Group Supervision

Used by Family Safeguarding ServicePrioritised according to risk rating

IRO / CP Chair / LADO

Supervision

Supervision Agenda template (and the Wellbeing Performance and Development form)Reflective practiceMonthly supervision

Manager Supervision

Manager form and Wellbeing Performance and Development formKey risks (business and case) identified and escalated appropriately

Supporting accreditation of our workersIt will be a key driver of the SCSA to ensure that the social workers and social work managers in the workforce are prepared for the stages of assessment and accreditation of child and family practitioners and practice supervisors as set out by the Chief Social Worker and DfE.

It is likely that Employer endorsement is the first stage of the assessment and accreditation process and although it is generally intended to be used by employers so they can be clear of the standards of practice, it is also the first stage by which access to the external accreditation process will begin.

The SCSA will begin from June 2019 the process of reviewing and developing the proposed mechanisms, assessment process and timeline Surrey will need to adopt in order to be confident that social workers are ready to be endorsed and as a result can be put forward for external assessment. The work of the SCSA in this area will also need to ensure consistent, fair and equal processes are in place across the social work workforce. As part of this process The SCSA will need to make sure not only that appropriate support and reflective supervision is in place but also social workers/managers have access learning and development opportunities.

Examples of Continuous Professional Development PathwaysOur aim is to offer Surrey Family Resilience Service Workforce a clearly defined, challenging and professionally guided workforce development programme, which combines mandatory training with aspirational and innovative opportunities. As well as, supports continuous professional development which ultimately leads to better outcomes for children and families. This programme is currently being consulted on and will go to the SCSA Board in May 2019 for signing off.

For example:

Internal CPD programmes for all staff Induction (for staff new to Surrey ) both internally and across the Partnership Opportunity to access bespoke external training Bespoke professional development pathway for all staff using supervision,

quality assurance and personal development review outcomes Practice Educator training for social workers, Teachers and other partners. ASYE Assessor training for the four newly appointed ASW in Faculty one

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Leadership and Management development training opportunities across the Partnership including the planned Institute of Family Therapy upcoming leadership training

Opportunity to develop ten newly appointed ASW or managers using our corporate membership to Research in Practice (RIP).

Leadership and ManagementSurrey’s Family Resilience Services recognises Leadership is an essential part of professional development for staff who strive to progress.

SCSA aims to ensure that anyone who undertakes a management or supervisory role is given the appropriate guidance and professional development to become a competent leader. All our managers are advocates for the professional development of their staff and will be responsible for ensuring their teams feel supported in using innovation and the very best up to date research to form their everyday practice.

The structure within the social care teams will provide clear career pathways for the workforce to ensure we have an effective succession plan and can grow our own talent.

Monitoring and Review of this strategyThis strategy will be reviewed initially at 6 monthly intervals by the Surrey Children’s Services Academy Board Reference Group, and by PLT and will be signed off by the Surrey Children’s Services Academy Board. Progress will be reported to PLT and to the Children’s Services Improvement Board with statistics on:

recruitment and retention, vacancies, staff absence and maternity leave attendance at training courses, ASYE progress Staff supervision Identified training needs analysis for staff.

An annual report on the Children’s Workforce Development Strategy will be prepared by the SCSA and presented to PLT and to the Children’s Services Improvement Board.

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Related documents

For further information on our structures and procedures, please see:

Surrey Children’s and Safeguarding Service: How our approach is changing Practice Learning Framework & the Practice Audit Service Learning and Development Plan Children’s Services Procedure Manual New Local Safeguarding Children Arrangements (from September 2019)

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