Children’s Services Workforce Development Strategy - Print version

Foreword

The Children’s Services Workforce Development Strategy sets out our commitment to diversity and inclusion and how we will achieve; a stable, permanent workforce, an effective wellbeing offer and a comprehensive learning and development offer.  We will do this focusing on meeting the needs of our communities to have a workforce that is reflective of the people we provide a service to.

The strategy highlights what we have done, where we are now, where we want to be and how we plan to get there to become a more diverse and inclusive service, with One Coventry values. Our commitment through our Corporate Workforce Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and Corporate People Plan and One Coventry Values are clear that a commitment to equality underpins the way that we work with partners to continue to deliver good protection, support or intervention to vulnerable families across Coventry, this is supported by strong political support to ensure children’s services is supported to deliver a sustainable workforce.

The service recognises that creating the right conditions for good practice to succeed and supporting Children’s Services colleagues to be the best they can have a positive impact for children. The wellbeing of staff has never been more critical, staff are supported with a wellbeing offer to help them to achieve a work-life balance.

The service has worked extensively to ensure that the recruitment and retention of Children and Family Social Workers is a key strategic and operational priority. The service continues to have a relentless focus on addressing vacant posts and attracting high-quality social workers to Coventry.

We are proud to have been rated as a ‘Good’ authority in our Ofsted Inspection in August 2022 and rated ‘Outstanding’ in our HMIP Youth Justice inspection in February 2023.

Coventry Family Valued focuses on the importance of supporting children to remain at the heart of their families and their communities; fundamental to this is restorative and relationship-based practice, developing a programme of change that supports practitioners to truly work with children, young people and the families we serve by empowering and enabling families to reach family led decisions. Our approach to Child Friendly Cov is about developing a whole city approach to supporting Coventry children and young people with the ambition to make Coventry the best city in the UK for children and young people to live and grow up.

The service continues to maintain and provide support, training and investment in the workforce which are fundamental to service innovation and improvement and help make Coventry a great place to work and live. Existing work and good practice are being taken forward by continuing to develop a culture of ongoing learning and development. 

Practitioners across Children’s Services continue to be central to the achievement of these goals and ambitions for children, young people and their families in Coventry.

Councillor Pat Seaman

Lead Member for Children’s Services

Introduction

The Workforce Development Strategy is aligned to the One Coventry Plan [/onecoventryplan] and the People Plan [/peopleplan], it outlines strategies to support and improve the recruitment and retention of children’s services practitioners, including through the training and development offer. The focus is to improve the capability of staff to not only engage with children, young people and families well but also to enable practitioners to be able to assess and make decisions which are risk proportionate whilst creating solutions with families alongside multi-agency partners. The core learning and professional development offer is mapped to the knowledge and skills statements and focuses on promoting the practice knowledge and skills of the children’s workforce and evidence to maintain Social Work England registration for social workers.

As a Good authority, the service is proud that Ofsted recognised the achievements in supporting good outcomes for children and young people in Coventry, creating an environment where good social work practice can flourish.

Recruitment and retention of social workers is a national problem and accepted in the government's response to the Independent Review of Social Care. The workforce profile over the past few years has led to Children’s Services supporting a “grow our own” approach, with a key focus on enabling social workers into the profession, and their growth into experienced social workers with high-quality practice standards. Coventry City Council endorsed financing to be able to offer experienced social workers in children’s services a retention payment to retain staff through a competitive financial offer and build workforce stability. In addition, the progression handbook /framework is being reviewed to offer a competitive and progressive career pathway for Newley Qualified Social Workers/Social Workers/Advanced Social Workers/Senior Practitioners as well as the launch of a clinical supervision offer for the whole children’s services workforce

Restorative and Relational Practice is fundamental to “The Coventry Way” practice approach; one of three spires of the Coventry Family Valued programme. The Coventry Way encompasses relational and restorative practices alongside Signs of Safety frameworks to build the practice approach. Fundamental to the practice approach is family-led decision-making, another spore of the Coventry Family Valued programme. In order to embed practice in this way, practitioners require access to training, tools and support to deliver the best service and outcomes for children and families. There is a continued commitment to build a career development pathway which builds The Coventry Practitioner; practitioners who are competent, capable and equipped to practice in The Coventry Way with the One Cov values. This means enabling the delivery and access of tools and resources through a variety of digital platforms.

Children’s Services has a strong learning and development offer for all staff, practitioners, for internal foster carers and supporting our residential children’s homes, benefitting from learning and development opportunities delivered through a minimum of core and mandatory training. There is a bespoke learning and development pathway for all social work roles within children's services that provides a broad range of critically reflective opportunities that support the development of knowledge, skills and professional competency.

The Children’s Services Residential Strategy provides a bespoke training offer for residential staff working in the Children’s Homes.

The Youth Justice Service judged ‘outstanding in February 2023, has a comprehensive Youth Justice Service Workforce Development Strategy 2021-2023 that supports and promotes the continuous development, progression pathways and opportunities for staff within the Youth Justice Service aligned to the overarching Children’s Services Workforce Development Strategy.

The strategic growth and review of services planned are governed by regulatory and statutory requirements, and it is imperative these are supported through training and development which underpin service delivery.

All staff and practitioners have an annual appraisal and career development plan which assists with retention, learning and continuous professional development.

Through the West Midlands Social Work Teaching Partnership there are regular workshops and research-informed learning opportunities to promote an evidence-based culture of learning and professional curiosity. These opportunities sit alongside access to online platforms such as Research in Practice and Care Knowledge; and close links with the adults safeguarding board and children safeguarding partnerships.

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. This includes two wellbeing weeks per year and a Clinical Supervision offer to staff.

Our workforce priorities

A resilient workforce is required to support families in achieving their aims and keeping children and young people protected and achieving good outcomes. Children’s Services is committed to achieving our overarching vision: ‘One Coventry: ‘Together children and families are at the heart of everything we do’

Coventry is committed to ensuring that the conditions for practice development include an operational culture that promotes a dialogue of relational and restorative practice, reflective thinking, feedback, learning, and support.

Our Workforce Priorities have been updated to reflect three key areas to focus on:

Achieving a stable workforce

• With permanent staff in all posts, a diverse and inclusive workforce that is representative of the Coventry community. 
• Working with National and Regional partners to ensure Coventry’s offer is competitive and fair; where agency practitioners are needed the expectations of the Memorandum of Understanding are met. 

An effective wellbeing offer

• Practitioners supported to achieve a good work-life balance. 
• Practitioners routinely provided with information about health and wellbeing and encouraged to access dedicated wellbeing activity that supports individuals to “bring their best selves to work”

Comprehensive and effective learning and development opportunities

• Learning and development offer that supports practitioners to continuously develop their competencies, knowledge, skills and the quality and consistency of practice. 
• Clear Progression pathways at all levels from pre-qualification to management. 

Our Vision and One Coventry Values

1. Children are at the heart of everything we do
2. Working with children and families and services around them
3. High quality child-centred effective services that are reflective and responsive to change
4. Our One Coventry approach
5. Committed sustainable workforce

The One Coventry vision is threaded throughout the Children’s Services vision and sets the tone for the work in Children’s Services. This encompasses the core priorities of the work undertaken across children’s services with a focus on children and families, our workforce, practice and partnership. The focus on restorative and relationship-based working has supported a recent culture shift in the way that we work with children and families, and with each other. This is a key part of the Coventry Family Valued programme. This shift to working with rather than doing to or for aligns with each pillar of the Children’s Services vision to ensure the best outcomes for children, young people and their families. 

One Coventry is the narrative that sits behind the Council’s objectives, key strategies and approaches.  Our One Coventry Values have been agreed with employees from across the Council and launched to reflect how we do things now and will continue to do in the future, working together to improve citizens' lives and the city. This is a key part of the Coventry Family Valued programme.

These values influence and shape the value base underpinning the Coventry Family Valued programme.

A One Coventry approach will enable us all to:

• Be open and fair
• Nurture and develop
• Engage and empower
• Create and innovate
• Own and be accountable
• Value and respect

What have we done?

• A recruitment and retention payment of £3,000 will be paid to experienced social workers who remain in post for 12 months, effective from 1 April 2023 (to be paid April 2024).
• Team managers and Independent Reviewing Officers (IRO’s) job roles have been job evaluated to reflect responsibilities and bring inline with market rates.
• We have introduced ‘Staying Interviews’ with groups of staff to obtain feedback on what it is like working for Coventry Children’s Services.  
• We continue to undertake Exit interviews to understand why staff leave.
• We have developed a Workforce dashboard to improve access to live workforce data.
• Staff are actively encouraged to participate in the Employee Networks and invited to the Children’s Services Leadership Team.
• We have introduced Diversity and Inclusion as a standard agenda item in management meetings/team meetings.
• Took positive action and supported managers on a Black and Asian leadership programme, and women in leadership to support underrepresented groups in leadership.
• We use the Workforce Diversity & Inclusion Calendar to raise awareness and highlight important events throughout the year.
• We have established a new workforce performance and data subgroup to monitor workforce data.
• A revised return to practice scheme to support practitioners to re-register with Social Work England where this has lapsed.
• Our “refer a friend” scheme continues to be promoted to increase the number of experienced social workers recruited, paying £350 to friends who refer an Experienced social worker on completion of six months' satisfactory probation period.   
• We have reviewed our Children’s Services microsite to promote our benefits/updated our testimonials/included links to videos and reviewed our adverts to ensure inclusive language is used.
• We have updated our candidate guides for permanent and agency staff.
• We ensure that interview panels are diverse and inclusive and include children and young people or carers or foster carers.
• The bespoke Children’s Induction has been enhanced further to include the lived experiences of young people to shape practice.
• A comprehensive 2023-2024 Learning and Development Offer has been launched for staff.
• We have a 2023-2024 Foster Carers Learning and Development Offer and will be enhancing this further as part of the foster carers excellence project.
• To promote flexible working, we are piloting 9 day fortnights in specific service areas for social workers and non-social worker staff.
• The success of the Social Work Academy has seen the number of Cohorts per year increase to reduce the number of vacancies and reliance on agency staff.  
• We have launched a Clinical Supervision offer to support social workers. 
• We have a comprehensive Wellbeing offer which is supporting staff with their own mental health and wellbeing and providing a number of opportunities to get involved and look after their own health and wellbeing.
• We have a comprehensive wellbeing offer, which includes two wellbeing weeks each year.
• Developed a promotional video to encourage candidates to join Coventry.
• Have quarterly meetings with agency suppliers to ensure consistent messages – effective partnership working/compliance with MOU.
• Increasing conversion rates encouraging agency staff to come and work for Coventry City Council.
• The Kids Channel 4 TV programme is helping to promote and encourage social workers to join Coventry.

Where are we now?

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.

Workforce data collection

Diversity and Inclusion Report Data 2023 - Children’s Services

Sex

There is a greater percentage of females to males in the City of Coventry’s population, which is reflected within Children’s Services, with 87% of the total employees being female and 13% being male.

Sexual Orientation

Straight/Heterosexual forms the greatest percentage of Sexual Orientation within both data sets, followed by ‘Unknown/ Not Answered’.

Age

The greatest percentage of employees within Children’s services are aged between 35-44, followed closely by 45-54 year olds and then 25-34 year olds. This is reflected within the census data of the greatest percentage of the population being aged between 34-49 years old.

Ethnicity

Within both data sets ‘White’ is the most common Ethnicity, followed by ‘Asian’ and ‘Black’ ethnicities.

Religion

Children’s data is reflective of the Census data with the majority of the employees being of Christian Faith, closely followed by no religion.

Disability

The majority of the population in Coventry are not Disabled under the Equality Act, which is reflected within Children’s Services, as the majority of employees (79%) do not have a disability status.

Appraisal data 2023

Career conversation

• 425 - no present plans to move
• 47 - Looking to move roles within the service area
• 23 - Looking to move roles internally but outside current service area
• 18 - Prefer not to state
• 15 - Looking to finish career in current post
• 13 - Looking for positions externally
• 4 - Plans to retire or leave role for other reasons

Appraisals submitted 2021/22

• 6 - Children's Services Improvement Team
• 29 - Family Valued
• 267 - Help and protection (26 not submitted)
• 267 - Looked After Children (3 not submitted)
• 170 - Quality assurance, Performance and Commissioning
• 16 - Social Work Academy (2 not submitted)

Where do we want to be?

Achieving a stable workforce

The service aspires to be a leading regional employer of choice for social workers. Coventry Children’s Services host and is a member of the West Midlands Social Work Teaching Partnership. This partnership was formed in response to the challenges around statutory placement provision and retention of social workers in the West Midlands region, alongside supporting regional continuous professional development.

Children’s Services will continue to strategically plan for future cohorts into the social work academy to “Grow our own” and thereby support workforce stability and development. This includes increasing the number of students offered placements in children’s services and continuing to offer social work apprenticeships and expanding the apprenticeship offer.

Further developments are planned to improve the oversight of the workforce including using the workforce dashboard to improve understanding of the diversity make up and needs to the workforce; using “Let’s Talk” sessions to discuss Equality, Diversity and Inclusion issues; and regular health checks will be completed via surveys.

To understand more about what supports and motivates practitioners to work for children's services we have introduced Staying interviews. We are reviewing Recruitment branding and materials to support a competitive offer, and this includes reference to the Channel 4 Documentary about young people cared for by Coventry children’s Services (KIDS TV programme) and, an emphasis on children’s services promoting restorative practice which is Child and friendly.

We are also refreshing the induction programme for new staff and introducing induction checklists for managers and an induction booklet for staff to improve the experience starting their Coventry career.

Future considerations include providing a recruitment offer to international social workers and work is underway to consider the needs of this group and the best way to support them to start well and develop well in Coventry.

An effective wellbeing offer

The service will continue to develop and enhance the Wellbeing Offer for Children’s Services staff to create a work-life balance and improve health and wellbeing of staff. ‘Wellbeing Fairs’ will be introduced during 2023, in various locations (Broadgate House/Area Teams/Family Hubs) to provide further information and advice about health and wellbeing to give staff an opportunity to talk to professionals about a number of health initiatives.

Children’s Services will drive and support the health and wellbeing of the workforce, through Wellbeing Weeks; Wellbeing Fairs; the Clinical Supervision offer, regular sickness absence clinics to reduce sickness absence and support and promote flexible working across the service.

A comprehensive effective learning and development opportunities

A comprehensive Learning and Development offer to ensure that all employees are clear on the expectations of their role and how they contribute to Service and One Coventry values and behaviours and Council-wide strategic objectives.

Children’s Services will aim to report 100% attendance for Appraisals and Mandatory training.

Support learning and development for all staff and develop career pathways to support succession planning and skills audit to identify gaps in the workforce and deliver bespoke training for staff/managers.