Children’s Services Workforce Development Strategy

Achieving a stable workforce

Children’s Services is proud to have been rated as a ‘Good’ authority in the Ofsted Inspection in August 2022 and rated ‘Outstanding’ in the HMIP Youth Justice inspection in February 2023.

Coventry is based within the West Midlands, in an area where there are a number of local authorities all competing for the same pool of social workers. The hardest positions to recruit to are Advanced Social Workers, who are highly experienced social worker/practitioners. Local Authorities continue to compete with each other offering large retention payments and market supplements in order to attract staff. This remains a challenge, and Coventry is offering retention payments to attract experienced social workers of £3,000.

The service has a robust recruitment process that is specifically targeted at recruiting experienced children and family’s social workers through a range of social media platforms, recruitment campaigns and other innovative approaches. This has included authentic short testimonial videos from Coventry practitioners and an animated advert to promote the positives of a career in social work and recruiting international social workers on sponsorship arrangements.

The return to practice scheme was revised in 2023 and supported staff to start as children and families workers, whilst providing a programme which enables shadowing, learning and development in order to meet the requirements to re-register as a Social Worker with Social Work England where registration has lapsed. This is now a paid opportunity.

There has been a challenge to recruit agency social workers at times, due to the demand in the region for good quality, experienced agency social workers. The Local Authority rely upon a medium-term strategy of recruiting and growing experience from NQSWs stages, agency workers are utilised to provide NQSWs the time and space to grow in practice experience.

A” grow our own” approach has seen many senior practitioners progress into Team Manager positions. Matching Birmingham Children’s Trust rates of pay for Team Managers has been a challenge. However, following job evaluation processes, Social Work Team Manager roles have been recognised as being at an increased grade. Alongside this, the IRO/CP chair roles have also been job evaluated and recognised at a higher grade in line with their expertise

The Social Work Academy provides a starting point for different pre-qualifying routes and ensures that Social Workers receive consistent support and training to provide a high-quality service to children and families in Coventry, the Social Work Academy continues to contribute significantly towards building a permanent, stable social work workforce through students and NQSWs and managing a progression panel process. The Social Work Academy are also delivering opportunities to practitioner’s non-social work qualified and recently launched a child and family apprenticeship pathway.

The competition within the region to compete for children’s services workforce, particularly qualified social workers mean job roles are needing to be regularly benchmarked for pay rates and incentives. This is required to be a robust and regular piece of work in order to maintain a stable and permanent workforce, which lends itself continuous review of the career progression scheme.

Routes into Coventry Children’s Services

• Coventry invests in students through all routes, whether traditional university routes or fast track qualification programmes.

Social Work Apprenticeship Degree (SWAD)

• Social Work Apprenticeship Degree: 20 employees have been supported over the year.
• 8 SWAD’s in year 3 have either completed or are progressing at Coventry University, 6 SWAD’s are in year 2 at Coventry University and 6 SWAD’s are in their first year at Warwick University. Interviews are underway for the second cohort to commence at Warwick university in September 2023.

Step-Up to Social Work

• 7 students have been supported during this period with Practice Educator support to enter the social work academy. Recruitment for the next cohort in January 2024 is underway and will support a further 7 students to qualify.

University students

• The social work academy has supported 16 social work students across the service to have successful placements within the teams. These students come from Warwick University, Coventry University and Birmingham City, University of Birmingham, and De Montfort University. This is a mix of first and second placements.
• It is evident from presence at compass jobs fare, the reputation of the Social Work Academy is attracting NQSWs from across the region to Coventry.

Frontline

• Coventry hosts 1 Frontline unit currently. These students will qualify and join the Social Work Academy. Another unit is planned for September 2023.

Return to Practice

• The revised Return to Practice Programme began in January 2023. This programme supports Social Workers who are currently not registered with Social Work England and have been out of practice for more than two years. A 12-week Programme enables them to update their knowledge and skills so that they can meet the requirements for re-registration with Social Work England, whilst being paid as a Children and Families Worker. This is gaining attention from regional LA’s/Trust also, as Birmingham are the only other LA/Trust offering this programme.

NQSWs

• Current retention rates of NQSWs. There is a 74% retention rate for the last three years for Social Workers coming through the Social Work Academy remaining in employment with Coventry City Council.
• Retention Rates are currently at 74% overall for the last 3 years (From Cohort 8 onwards).
• In the last 3 years NQSWs from University have a 79% retention rate
• The first 5 Social Work Apprentice Degree (SWAD’s) entered the SWA in cohort 12 and 13, August 2022. There is currently a 100% retention rate.
• 6 Aspiring to Social Work entering the Social Work Academy in cohort 7 in January 2021 is currently 100% retention rate. They have all now progressed to G7 roles.
• The retention rate for Frontline route NQSWs is 63%. Overall retention rate for Frontline Social Workers is 58%.  24 Frontline participants joined Coventry as NQSWs from Sept 19; 10 have left.
• Step up to Social Work programme retention is 20% out of 5 recruited in Cohort 8.  The last Step Up NQSWs joined in April 21. Overall the retention rate for Step up to Social Worker programme is 50%.

An effective wellbeing offer

Children’s Services are supported corporately with a well-being offer. This involves access to the Counselling Service staffed by a team of qualified counsellors able to offer support around bereavement, mediation and cognitive behavioural therapy to name a selection. Children’s Services have been able to work with colleagues in the Occupational Health Service to deliver a successful wellbeing offer and support staff to achieve a work life balance. The Wellbeing offer includes two dedicated weeks a year to staff to support with their own mental health and take part in a number of activities and access to health advice to look after their own health and wellbeing.

In conjunction with the Corporate Occupational Health service, the bespoke wellbeing weeks have included: healthy lifestyle screening; blood pressure checks; boost your wellbeing sessions; Men’s talk session; Musculoskeletal assessment and ergonomic advice; yoga; menopause awareness; massages; free gym passes and a number of other sporting activities to undertake with teams. The Wellbeing weeks take place in March and September each year. These are supported by Wellbeing Champions across the service who help to promote and engage staff the activities on offer.   Feedback from staff is positive and is used to learn and develop further future wellbeing weeks.

The corporate wellbeing offer continues to support this and also offers access to a wide range of services and information to help promote wellbeing this includes Wellbeing Wednesdays; support to mental wellbeing and stress; counselling support service; workplace stress audits; a range of training modules including emotional resilience training; mindfulness for a better life; and a number of different awareness sessions.

The monthly newsletter Be safe, Be Healthy, Be Well available to all staff provides topical issues around safety, health and wellbeing including maintaining mental and physical health.

Sickness Absence clinics are undertaken within the service areas to monitor sickness absence. Enabling Attendance Policy refresher training is provided to managers to support managing sickness absence.

The service also provides a clinical supervision offer aimed to:

• support social workers/practitioners to remain well in work and maintain good levels of relationship-based practice 
• supporting those who have been on long term sickness due to stress and anxiety to return to work (long term sick would be those defined as being off sick longer than 4 weeks), where this is appropriate 
• supporting those experiencing regular and short-term periods of sickness to remain well in work 
• offering critical incident support following a critical incident which is likely to impact upon individuals offering an optimal service to children and families, as a result of the incident 

The pilot began in February 2023 and provides a Critical incident pathway managing referrals in response to a critical incident and a long-term sickness pathway and short-term regular absences managing referrals for Clinical Supervision through the Occupational Health's medical assessment service for all staff.    

Flexible working is key to creating a work-life balance. Exit Interview/Leaver report data confirms flexible working as one of the top reasons staff leave in Children’s Services.  The corporate Flexible Working policy provides staff with options to work in a more flexible way and is seen as a retention tool to retain staff. In Children’s Services, a number of service areas will be planning to pilot/trial 9 day fortnights with a range of staffing groups during 2023.

Comprehensive effective learning and development opportunities

Training and development opportunities are strong, with a comprehensive offer for children’s services, mapped to every role in the service. This is strengthened by collaboration with the Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership multi-agency offer. The annual Practice Week is jointly delivered with adults' services and invites an array of presenters, including academics, to deliver sessions to the children’s services workforce. This is tested through a service feedback/training evaluation which is undertaken and supports the development of the annual learning and development plan.

Social Workers can access wider training from the Children's Services Learning and Development Brochure, which is accessible to all staff. All the training and development activities and resources in the brochure are mapped against the Post Qualifying standards, Professional Capabilities Framework CF and Knowledge and Skills Statements. There are also a variety of evidence-informed online resources and training opportunities on the Research in Practice platform. Furthermore, the Social Work Academy team provide learning and development around Signs of Safety and relational and restorative practice awareness to the workforce and the partnership. The development of the Children's Services Practice Hub continues to take forward a practice learning organisational culture with an easily accessible online platform to support good practice.

The Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) Programme supports Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSWs) to develop their skills, knowledge and capability, and strengthen their professional confidence. The Programme assures the quality of social workers’ practice by assessing NQSWs’ development against the post qualifying standards, which encompass the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF) and the Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSS), one key component of the ASYE programme is the provision of tailored and mandatory training and development opportunities. The social work progression pathway is illustrated below.

The growth of children’s homes has led to the need for staff to be employed, and sufficiently trained by Coventry City Council. The apprenticeship levy has been key to some of the qualification requirements of this cohort of staff. There has needed to be a focus and drive upon recruitment for children’s homes to attract the staff.

The apprentice levy offers apprentices to the wider children’s services workforce, with L4 and L5 children and families apprenticeship re-launched this year.

Within Coventry Children's Youth Justice Service (CYJS), the aim is to develop and maintain a high-quality workforce that supports and promotes continuous professional development and opportunities for practitioners across the service through qualification pathways that meet the needs of the children and young people’s workforce.

Coventry Youth Justice Service CYJS has a service specific Workforce Development Strategy (2021-23) given the unique demands and needs of the Service; this recognises the need to focus on the ‘child first, offender second’ which therefore required practitioners to adopt a change in approach to that which they may have used previously with children in the criminal justice system. Historically, within Youth Justice, practitioners have largely focussed on the risks that children present and how to manage these; however, the change in emphasis as highlighted above requires a shift in the way that practitioners work with children to ensure that building a trusting relationship with the children becomes paramount and to ensure that account is taken of the principles of desistance and trauma informed practice in order to affect change. 

The Professional Support Service career development offer focus on career development opportunities for colleagues within the Professional Support Service.

Professional Support roles are generally part of initial steps for candidates along their career path.  Previously, a specific offer for administrative support staff was not available resulting in staff either becoming stuck within their role for lengthy periods of time without developing the skills and networks to be able to progress their career or alternatively leaving the employment of Coventry City Council to find other opportunities.

It is also recognised that many Professional Support Service Staff take up a role within the service as a way of working more closely with Children and Families. The career development offer has specific provision for employees looking to take up these opportunities.

One of the key priorities in the Corporate People Plan is to develop internal talent, as part of this commitment, the corporate Leadership and Management Development offer – provides opportunities for staff who want to develop their management skills. This includes: a Stepping into Management Programme- Level 3; CMI Management Level 5 and a Calibre – a new talent programme for employees with a disability. The women in Leadership BALI courses continue to be available and are promoted.

InterVision are reflective spaces for team managers and team leaders to peer evaluate each other’s supervision records, the audits are undertaken live and underpinned by restorative principles of “high support and high challenge”. The process is evaluative, and learning is taken by managers live in the session. This does not include personal supervision records, but records related to practice and family-facing work.

The InterVision sessions have been rolled out to managers to take forward the learning and drive forward. The process opens the discussions, notes, and celebrates the strengths in the records, and areas for development.  Quality assurance activity undertaken of supervision practice evidences a positive impact upon supervision practice of InterVision.

All staff and practitioners have an annual appraisal and career development plans which assists with retention, learning and continuous professional development. All Children’s Services practitioners are also able to access a broad multi-agency training offer through Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership. All staff complete the Corporate Statutory and Mandatory e-learning courses in the first month of starting with the Council and every three years thereafter.