Providing and enabling small packages of sector-led improvement support, aimed at LAs in the region, that require support to improve their children’s services.
Project Goals
- Providing a framework for sector-led improvement across councils’ services and activities, in order to identify and support opportunities for small package support to support improvement.
- Providing a single point of access to a wide range of key contextual and performance data to highlight strengths/weaknesses for individual and collective exploration.
- Subject matter expert support and consultation on key projects undertaken to support regional improvement and learning.
Sector-Led Improvement
- Audio Recording Support (AFC/Lewisham) – Supporting Lewisham to audio record child protection conferences
- Diamond (Tower Hamlets) – to support mothers who have repeatedly been separated from their infant children through care proceedings – in order to help them to keep their children in the future or to have no further children. Wider roll-out across East London – introduction of pilot model. Commencement of pilot service in Tower Hamlets – end November 2022
- Stop & Search (Haringey/Enfield) – working jointly with police to review stop and search activities resulting safeguarding actions. Haringey partnered with Enfield (share a Borough Command Unit) on this work but are leading this on behalf of the North sub-region
- Adolescent safeguarding from Extra Familial Harm (Redbridge) – Piloting the use virtual reality technology in adolescent safeguarding interventions, offering the prospect of developing new and more effective means of enabling behaviour change in young people and their parents/carers, recognising the importance of family engagement as a protective factor in managing the risk of extra-familial harm.
- Family Hubs (Enfield) – Develop Family Hub model in Enfield based on the evidence of the best practice to start the process of change.
- Signs of Safety Reboot (Enfield) – The project was to undertake a diagnostic of Enfield’s Signs of Safety model of practice and to develop a road map to ensure the model’s sustainability.
- CSC Covid-19 Regional Recovery (Hillingdon) – Extension of the Devolved Budgets concept under Regional Response Strand 2 to protect adolescents from extra-familial harms.
- Virtual Reality Headset Project (Redbridge) – Afford practitioners opportunity to use the headset with children and families to enable them to better understand the inherent messages in the videos. It is a creative and innovative way to develop relationships and partnerships with children and families.
- PLO Pre-proceedings Toolkit (reducing court backlogs) (Hillingdon) – A toolkit for the pre-proceedings stage of the PLO process for local authorities to use to follow best practise.
- Family Hubs (Redbridge) – Introducing a Family Hub model offers the council and its partners an opportunity to deliver a step change in the effectiveness of its work with families, moving away from partners making a series of referrals or interventions for a family; instead working together to ensure that families get the support they need.
- Testing a Peripatetic Family Hubs Approach (Camden) – the project tests an outreach-based approach to family hubs, taking information advice and guidance on a range of issues to existing family-friendly community settings.
- Design a new specialist Children’s Social Work Apprenticeship (Greenwich) – A specialist Children’s Social Work Apprenticeship that is designed to both address the national issue of social workers and the levels of staff retention; and to also address the needs and requirements of social workers working within children’s services.
- International Recruitment Workshop (Croydon/Sutton/Harrow/Ealing) – borough led event delivered jointly by 4 LAs for the whole region to share practice and learnings around the recruitment, development and retention of international CSW recruits.
- MACE Peer Review (multiple LAs) – new arrangements for undertaking child exploitation work have been rolled out in London over the last 18 months and this project sought to understand their effectiveness.
- Preparation for Adulthood Peer Review (Barking and Dagenham/Waltham Forest/Achieving for Children/Hammersmith and Fulham/Redbridge/Haringey) – 6 London Boroughs brought together on the topic of Preparation for Adulthood, specifically looking at Employment Pathways for young people with SEN
- Permanent Recruitment Workshop (Camden/Newham/Harrow/Wandsworth) – borough led event delivered jointly by 4 LAs for the whole region to share practice and learnings to support recruitment and retention, with a focus on 4 thematic areas; 1) Retention First 2) Strengthening Digital, 3) Learning from International Recruitment Practice and 4) Practice Models at the Heart