No bystanders in improving social care
In an on-going series of blogs, Birmingham City Council’s new head of Children’s Social Care Colin Tucker gives an insight into his work improving the service.
Interesting departmental leadership team Away Day. While everyone around the table wants us to succeed, I am very thoughtful about what expectations I make of them, especially as I know our recovery is not just down to social care and that other departments in the Council cannot just be interested bystanders but need to be proactive.
This led into a really important discussion about the need to constantly reinforce the knowledge around the Leadership Team about out Serious Case Reviews and embedding in learning.
We have decided to ask the Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board’s Safeguarding Team to produce a synopsis of key points from the last six Serious Case Reviews so that directors have a good understanding of lessons learnt and can review what we have done about it.
Other commitments from the departmental leadership team were also encouraging and include putting together small multi-disciplinary teams to support individual children’s homes and all of us being involved in social care children’s cases auditing - brilliant!
Just finished early discussions about running an intensive training course for all staff involved in our Duty & Assessment teams early next year, and this will focus on assessment skills and managing risk at the front-line.
I have reflected on how I ensure those staff we already have who are very good at assessment and care planning, and there are many of them, can be involved in delivering this training.
This is how we intend to take it forward. It will be based on the model used for care management teams and involve delivering the training on the back of producing a clear procedures and standards manual - and this will be part of a single manual which includes the care management practice standards recently introduced.
I know some staff have found it hard to accept my statement that our assessment and care planning skills are inadequate and I genuinely feel disappointed that those who are really good at this may feel somewhat blighted by this comment. But the evidence I have does tell me I could reach no other conclusion.
Once again, it seems such a big challenge to strike the right balance between acknowledging our weaknesses and recognising what we are good at, but I am determined to target training on the front-line.
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