Children and Families Trust Workforce Development Strategy 2011-14

SCOPE / The Workforce Development Strategy applies across the Children and Families Trust partnership. It is for everyone
who works with children, young people and parents/ carers in Tower Hamlets.
Further education, health, housing, crime and justice
workforces have strong commitments to the adult population
as well as children and families: this strategy explains how
these organisations will respond to the needs of children and families specifically.
This is a three year strategy for 2011-14. The strategy will be implemented through yearly action plans.
APPROVED BY / Children and Families Trust (TBC)
APPROVAL DATE / TBC
PLANNED REVIEW
DATE / TBC
LEAD AUTHOR / Kate Bingham, Acting Service Head Resources, Children, Schools and Families, LBTH
Harriet Potemkin, Policy Officer, Children, Schools and Families, LBTH
DOCUMENT OWNED BY / Children and Families Trust

1. OUR VISION

We want all our children, young people and their families to receive excellent services informed by their views, which are easy to access, targeted at needs and delivered locally to make a difference to their lives.

We need a strong and integrated workforce in order to achieve this. Our aim is for all people who work with children, young people and families in Tower Hamlets to be:

·  ambitious – for every child and young person

·  excellent in their practice

·  committed to partnership and integrated working

·  respected and valued as professionals.

All partners delivering services to children and families need to do so with fewer resources than we had in the past. This means it is more important than ever for our workforce to be flexible and able to deliver holistic services, responding to sometimes complex layers of need in a holistic and integrated way.

Integrated working is particularly important when a child or young person has additional needs to those which are usually met in a universal setting. A key aim of this strategy is to support our workforce to meet the needs of children, young people and families in partnership with other agencies, using the Tower Hamlets Family Wellbeing Model as the framework for consultation, co-ordination and co-operation between agencies. Our aim is to support the development of our workforce to enable staff to work flexibly across the boundaries of health services, education and social care, culture and leisure, the voluntary sector, housing services and crime and justice services.

2. HOW WE DEVELOPED OUR STRATEGY

·  During December 2008 to June 2009, an analysis of the children’s workforce was carried out using the Children’s Workforce Development Council’s One Children's Workforce Tool.

·  During 2010, consultation was undertaken by The Hub and Synovate UK, with eight families living in poverty in the borough, as part of our Child Poverty Commissioning Pilot. This consultation has given useful insight into the services families want, and the characteristics they want our workforce to have.

·  The strategy has been developed in line with the Department for Children School and Families 2020 Children and Young People’s Workforce Strategy but we will respond to any new direction from the Department for Education.

·  We have referred to the Department for Children School and Families Working Together to Safeguard Children: A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and the recommendations in this document are reflected in our training programme.

·  We have considered the interim report from the Eileen Munro Review of Child Protection in the development of our approach for how professionals working in universal services needs to understand and think professionally about the children, young people and families they are working with.

·  A new Workforce Development Group was set up in August 2010 to develop our strategy for 2011-14.

3. DEFINING THE WORKFORCE

We define our children and young people’s workforce as anyone who works with children or young people in the borough, whether through paid employment or voluntary work. This includes those who also have strong commitments to the adult population as well as children and families. In this strategy, we focus on how these organisations will respond to the needs of children and families specifically.

The children’s workforce includes all practitioners delivering health, early years, education, youth, social care, crime and justice and housing services and any other service impacting on a child/young person and/or their parents/carers.

We have grouped our workforce into three categories, which correspond with the tiers of need set out in our Family Wellbeing Model.

·  Category 1: All professionals who work with children, young people and parents/ carers

·  Category 2: All professionals who need to address children and families’ needs at Tier 2 (targeted) and 3 (specialist).

·  Category 3: All operational and strategic managers who are responsible for services to children, young people and parents/ carers operating at Tier 2 and 3

In addition to these three categories, practitioners will have skills and knowledge particular to their service or profession. The development of these specialist skills are not covered by this strategy, but are addressed by each individual service or sector. The specific professional skills and knowledge our workforce needs is broad, ranging from child protection, to health, education, special educational needs, housing, antisocial behaviour, youth offending, drug and alcohol abuse and more.

Figures still needed to estimate the size of the workforce

Agency
1 / 2 / 3
Children, Schools & Families (LBTH)
Schools
Adults (LBTH)
Housing (Tower Hamlets Homes) / 40 / 4 / 6
Housing (RSLs)
Health
Mental health and addiction services
Police
Voluntary sector

4. NATIONAL CONTEXT

Following the election of a new Government in May 2010, organisations delivering services to children, young people and their families are facing huge changes. These include streamlining the way we work to save money, continuing to improve what we offer residents and developing the relationship between residents and public sector agencies. The implications of the Chancellor’s emergency budget in June 2010 and the Comprehensive Spending Review in October, mean that we need to identify significant savings across the public sector.

These changes will have a significant impact on our workforce in Tower Hamlets. There is an increased need for effective mechanisms to be in place for partnership working to ensure better allocation of collective resources, joined-up commissioning and for those delivering services at the frontline to work effectively together to meet the needs of children, young people and families in a flexible way. We will need to explore new ways of developing our workforce in partnership, for example through the shared delivery of training programmes, in order to make the best use of reduced resources.

In anticipation of the Munro Review reporting in March 2010, as well as in response to our local Family Wellbeing Model, we need to develop how we can support practitioners in universal and targeted services to build their skills and knowledge in how they work with vulnerable families. Our universal and targeted services need to use effective early intervention to build resilience within families, avoid the need for more serious interventions later and to reduce the volume of referrals into social care. Munro has considered that while universal services cannot and should not replace the function of social work, they need to be able to understand and think professionally about the children, young people and families they are working with. The review will look at the spectrum of support for families, focusing on issues such as:

·  developing a greater range of expertise in Early Years settings and other universal services in support of vulnerable children, young people and families

·  the types of changes required in universal services to tackle the rise in referrals to children’s social work services.

We will need to adapt to further developments in national policy and programmes over the coming months. As well as the final Munro Review reporting in March 2011, new initiatives relevant to workforce development include:

·  In December 2010 DfE will publish proposals to improve the quality of the school workforce, by reforming initial teacher training and continuous professional development, and by creating new programmes to attract the best to the profession, including former members of the armed forces.

·  Between November 2010 and September 2010, DfE is developing revised teacher standards and performance management regulations and new professional standards for social workers.

·  By March 2011, DfE plan to develop proposals to improve the quality of the Early Years workforce.

We will also need to respond to implications following the withdrawal of funding from the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) and the transfer of functions from the sector skills council to the DfE.

5. LOCAL CONTEXT

Children and Families Trust and our Children and Young People’s Plan

Our workforce development strategy will be implemented and monitored through our Children and Families Trust. The Trust is responsible for implementing our Children and Young People’s Plan 2010-12, which sets out our priorities for children and young people and the activities that will be put in place to achieve our vision across each of the themes of the Every Child Matters agenda. These are for every child and young person to:

·  Be healthy in body and mind

·  Stay safe, free from harm, fear or prejudice

·  Enjoy and achieve, growing up enjoying life, feeling proud of where they live and what they have achieved

·  Make a positive contribution, understand differences, confident and courageous about the future, able and willing to contribute to a strong and cohesive community

·  Achieve economic wellbeing, with the skills and opportunities to embark on a fulfilling career.

·  We also have a sixth priority area, which is to ensure that all children and their families receive excellent children’s services informed by their views, which are easy to access, targeted at needs, and delivered locally to make a difference to their lives.

The priorities set out in our Children and Young People’s Plan 2009-12 have informed this strategy and action plan.

The Children and Young People’s Plan includes commissioning and delivery plans for each of the six themes set out above; the Workforce Development strategy and action plan will inform the Commissioning and Delivery Plan for Excellent Children’s Services 2011-12.

Consultation with residents: what children and families want from our workforce

Consultation with families living in poverty in July 2010 has given us an insight into what families feel about the characteristics of their key worker and their ability to build an effective rapport is critical. Several of our families have a close relationship with a social worker, health visitor or worker in a voluntary sector service. They talk positively about their experience of the support they receive from their key workers, with a particular focus on the personalised nature of the support, and the fact that they believe that their key worker is genuinely interested in their welfare and acting in their best interests, rather than seeking to meet a target.

The consultation also raised the issue of more generic working and ensuring frontline staff are equipped with the basic knowledge needed to be able to support and signpost families to appropriate support.

Recommendations from this consultation include that we work to deliver person-centred services that focus on individual needs and tap into motivations to change whilst building ability to change and reducing barriers to access.

Supporting vulnerable children, young people and families

Our workforce needs to be skilled up to support the most vulnerable children, including looked after children, disabled children and those with mental health needs.

Children and young people will have different levels of need, which may change over time, and they will need different types of services depending on their level of need. The Tower Hamlets Family Wellbeing Model illustrates how we will respond to children and young people across three levels of need – universal, targeted and specialist – and we describe our services as falling into these three levels of support.

Our workforce provides many universal services – for example, maternity services at birth, health visiting and the chance to use children’s centres in early years, GP services/ primary care services and housing services at all ages and school and youth services in a young person’s teenage years.

Other parts of the workforce provide more targeted services, because children or young people have specific health, educational or behavioural needs or because they are at risk from harm, facing difficult circumstances or are involved in crime. Examples of targeted services include extra support for parents in the early years, behaviour support or additional help with learning in school, targeted work focused on a child or family's emotional health and wellbeing or services from our targeted youth support service.

There are also specialists in the workforce who provide services where the needs of the child and their family are so great that intensive or complex intervention is required to keep them safe or to ensure their continued development. Examples of specialist services include statutory Children’s Social Care interventions; statutory Youth Offending Service work, services provided for children and young people as a result of statements of SEN and services provided for children and young people with complex mental health needs and/or substance misuse dependency.

Of course all services at some points may work with children and young people at all three levels of need.

The diagram below illustrates the different levels at which specific skills, knowledge or understanding should be present within the workforce.

Family Wellbeing Model

The Family Wellbeing Model is a model for everyone who works with children, young people and parents/ carers in Tower Hamlets to help them work together to provide the most effective support for children and their families.

The purpose of the Family Wellbeing Model is to support children, young people and families to achieve their full potential by setting out in one place our approach to delivering services for all families across all levels of need. This includes health, early years, education, youth, social care, police, crime, justice and housing services and any other service impacting on a child/young person and/or their parents/carers.