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Stepping up support – a new approach for children’s services in Coventry

British red headed female in street holding son
Coventry city council is using its contacts with local universities and charities such as Frontline to offer a number of routes into social work. Photograph: Jamie Garbutt/Getty Images

Coventry children’s services are in the middle of an exciting transformation.

The council has put in place a series of changes focusing on delivering better care for children. At the heart of the commitment is an understanding that social workers must be supported and nurtured to deliver that care. Allan Hall, operational lead at Coventry children’s services, says: “You need to have consistent managers who can say: ‘we’re here for a number of years, we’re here to help you, we’re going to build a team, we’re going to support you.’”

The new approach has been backed by a reorganisation that means four area teams – central, east, west and south – work closely with the two family hubs in each area. Three new strategic leads– individually responsible for early help and protection, looked-after children and quality assurance and performance – will sharpen the focus on what matters: good outcomes for children.

This restructure means “fewer points of handover for families and children, so they build consistent relationships with social workers,” says Hall. Once a child is identified as being in need, a smoother, more efficient process is in place to support that child.

Improved support has gone hand-in-hand with an overhaul of the authority’s approach to recruitment and the professional development of social workers. Coventry, which has excellent links with local universities such as Warwick, Coventry and Birmingham, now offers a number of routes into social work. It is part of a West Midlands consortium of local authorities to sign up to Step Up to Social Work, a government-backed scheme to enable graduates to fast-track their way to a full social work qualification in 14 months. A commitment to developing social workers is being realised through the in-house Aspiring to Social Work scheme, providing an alternative route by which family practitioners can train as social work students. Coventry will also be partnering with Frontline, a charity delivering postgraduate social work training.

Recognising that new social workers need a lot of support, the council has created a social work academy, where team managers can be seconded for 12 months at a time to take on the job of mentoring and supporting newly-qualified social workers. When a newly qualified social worker joins the team, they spend their first six months working alongside experienced social workers and practice educators.

At the same time, Coventry is aware that many experienced social workers, despite excelling at their job, have no desire to rise through the ranks of management. Now they can move on instead to a practice educator role or an advanced social worker, taking on responsibility for promoting professional development, assessing students undertaking statutory placements or leading training workshops.

The council knows that it’s important to keep experienced social workers on the frontline, especially for the more challenging cases, says Hall: “It gives credibility when social workers have been around a little while and understand that families are not people trying to harm their children, they are people in crisis, who have experienced trauma, and who need somebody to listen to them and support them.”

This emphasis on nurturing social workers is helping provide a better service to children. Coventry will be the 2021 UK city of culture and a central part of its bid was its emphasis on enabling children to be creative and succeed in the city. In a 2017 inspection, the council won praise from Ofsted for its children’s council, Voices in Care. Ofsted said that its work was “making a difference to the lives of children looked after in Coventry”.

The council’s commitment to children has been demonstrated most recently by its adoption of the Signs of Safety model. Originally developed in Australia, Signs of Safety helps social workers to build good relationships with parents and children in cases where there are suspicions of child abuse. Hall explains: “It’s a positive model where we’re working with families and trying to empower them by asking questions like: ‘What’s working well? What are you worried about? What needs to change?’”

Practitioners who have used Signs of Safety find it helps them to identify risk and to be more specific about the particular child protection problems they are concerned about. It has also been successful in improving engagement and working with parents and carers through partnerships.

That determination to improve outcomes for children will shortly see the launch of the child in need programme in the east and west areas of the city. This is a partnership with Catch22. Family support workers, supervised by experienced social workers, will help families who have been on a child in need plan. They will work intensively with the families to strengthen their resilience and problem-solving ability, so that ultimately they no longer need the support of children’s services.

It’s not an easy journey, but a fresh intake and new ideas means that Coventry is well on the way to having children’s services that respond rapidly and sensitively to the needs of vulnerable children. The aim, says Hall, is to provide “the very best service for children and young people, so they’re safe and happy and turning into positive citizens, contributing to the culture and life of Coventry”.

To find out more about social work opportunities in Coventry, visit here