Children's Services staff newsletter - 15 November 2017
The Spotlight on Kings Lynn and West Norfolk Locality is brought to you by the Teams in Social Care and Early Help
Early Help - Everybody's Business
The Process Team's role is to provide information, guidance and support to any agency working with families through formal training sessions, practice development workshops, case consultations and coaching and modelling.
Across the locality 101 professionals have been trained in the Family Support Process since January. The training delivered by the Assessment & Training Officerintroduces professionals to the research which led to the development of early help, highlights the learning from SCR’s and the approaches that work most effectively to engage families.
Building confidence is a huge part of the Process Team's work and primarily achieved through regular contact with partners, from facilitating case consultations, coaching and modelling ways of working or signposting services. The service is really valued by our early help partners and the impact can be seen in the improving quality of information in FSP’s. Partner agencies leading an FSP who would like some advice or support should contact the Process Team.
“I am just writing to draw your attention to the wonderful service I have received from Nikki King. We have just had to fill out our first FSP and Nikki has been so helpful coming in to discuss the family with me and then coming back to meet with Mum for the initial meeting. She really has gone above and beyond and the way she conducted the session with Mum and the school staff was really fantastic………. A true asset to the service". Executive Head teacher, Sandringham and West Newton CE VA School
LAC Team Away Day
Following the re-jig of teams in the west another LAC team was created from the existing team and alsomembers from the FIT team, managed by Julia Mower, plus the addition of two AP’s. It was new territory for all so a team away day was organised by the two AP’s Mari Waldren and Louise Lawrence. Mari and Louise organised some ice breakers and team building games, and gave some examples of the kind of work they do with children, as LAC have never experienced having AP’s before.
We had visits from the Fostering Team workers Amanda and Helen to talk about Life Story and Reliance Building with children, and then Sue Russell came and talked through Bridging to Adoption.
We hired a room at the Sandboy Pub in Bawsey, with the hope of having some time in the afternoon to explore Bawsey Park, however the rain soon put a stop to that! But all in all a lovely lunch, some fun and learning helped the teams to get to know each other.
FSP and Schools
The Commissioning, Partnership and Community Capacity team, in partnership with the Process Team, were asked to undertake research of the use of the Family Support Process within schools. This was to enable open conversations around the use of the process, barriers and successes and also to build on our partnership working with schools, promoting our service offer to them. These conversations were also used to help us understand the needs of the local school community and any patterns of need or gaps in provision that they are seeing at a local level. This helps to inform our work in Community Capacity and also enables us to signpost and link services to the school, to enable them to better support the children and families.We focused on two school clusters in West Norfolk for this pilot and our findings have been incorporated into a report with recommendations. Our learning has shown us the willingness from schools to engage with us, for the benefit of the children and families and we saw some great examples of whole family support offered by some schools.
From our findings, a range of recommendations are being considered and implemented, such as increasing the school sign up to our Hub meetings, inclusion of Head’s in our Early Help Bulletin mailing list and future school focused networking events. Overall, our most positive success was the strengthening of the partnerships made and the links to our Early Help team.
Thinking Systemic in Early Help
In June this year a group of Early Help Family Focus managers embarked on the multi-agency systemic supervision course with Compass Training Service. It’s fundamental to bring reflection and critical thinking into practice, with supervisor and supervisee considering their relationships with service users and their context; the effect being continuous self-development of practice to maximise competency of practitioners working with children, young people and families.Reflection is great, but is it good enough? In practice, we may identify what works well and what could be better, but what next? Where is our practice taking us? Our responses and approaches are key to informing what happens next. Within Early Help we have the privilege to work with families to affect sustained change at an early opportunity. Practitioners in the West are being exposed to team managers developing systemic approaches in supervision. Through systemic supervision our thinking and approaches can become more reflexive, taking the opportunity to make, take, and grasp opportunities to shape the trajectory of case direction. To be both manager and supervisor is a balance of case management with regards to procedures and process alongside reflective learning - a Haiku from the programme is ‘tell less and ask more, your advice is not as good as you think’; something that has been difficult to adjust to although a worthwhile transition for developing quality practice.
In signs of safety spirit a question to leave you with is ‘on a scale of 0-10, how far has the quality of your practice been affected by the type of supervision you have received?’ /
Networking Event
CPCC Team held a very successful networking event in collaboration with the SWAN Centre in Downham Market in September
With a theme of ‘Professionals working with Young people’ the event attracted over 50 people representing 30 organisations and services and featured presentations from MAP, (the new West Norfolk YAB provider), Norfolk Constabulary and School Nursing as well as a ‘Voice of the Child’ workshop. It also showcased the SWAN Centre’s ‘Bridge the Gap’ project which is run by young people from the Downham area and aimed at breaking down barriers between generations.
For more information on the SWAN Centre’s work including the Junior Leaders Scheme please see theswancentre.org.uk
New Information Leaflets
CPCC Team have launched a range of Information leaflets aimed at helping professionals working with children with in the locality. Based on accumulated research resulting from enquiries into the team, the leaflets provide up to date information, advice and guidance on services at a local and regional level. Topics published so far include, Employment Support, Domestic Abuse Services, Well-Being & Mental Health Services for 0-5's and for 5-18’s, Autism Services, Separation (and making arrangements for children) and Separation (and the effects on children). The leaflets will be reviewed regularly to ensure they are up to date with the latest knowledge.
For copies of the leaflets or to suggest topics for the series please contact
DA Champions
Zoe Harding, Domestic Abuse Change Coordinator for West Norfolk and Breckland, attended the West Norfolk Head teachers’ Cluster meeting to deliver a presentation on domestic abuse and talk about the exciting free training her team have been funded to deliver. Staff from several local Schools in the area attended the meeting and took part in an interactive session looking at domestic abuse and the impact it has upon children.Zoe and her colleagues have been given three years funding from the Home Office to provide support and training for multi-agency staff who have contact with people affected by domestic abuse. They do this through a network of trained and supported workplace DA Champions who help their colleagues to understand and respond more effectively to domestic abuse. Having created a network of more than 800 champions across Norfolk, they are now focusing their Domestic Abuse Champions training and support on healthcare and education professionals, particularly those who are based within GP surgeries, primary care, and schools.
To find out more about the scheme and to access the free training click Here
Childrens Centre partners with schools.
There's so much more to Children's Centres
Annual ‘speed dating’ events are held at Vancouver Childrens Centre between local nurseries and schools to help ease children’s transition to school. The events involve reception teachers and nursery staff sitting in a circle and moving around to spend 20 minutes with each ‘date’. The Early years staff present a report for each child joining their ‘date’s’ school in September, showing progress against the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum areas. They also share information regarding additional needs, action plans, family issues or any other needs or fears the child may have. Parents have begun to play a bigger role, through surveys and parents evenings in January and at Easter where they agree strategies for home and nursery. Data from NCC shows 71.5% of children leaving reception at schools in the cluster area have a ‘good’ level of development in the EYFSP, increasing from 70.3% last year.
Rob Cole Team Manager on Systemic Supervision