Be Inspired! Shirley Ayres Consulting

A flurry of activity around twitter in the past two days as tweeting by a Chief Executive and councillors hits the media headlines.  Social media has transformed the way we work, shop, travel and communicate. Social media is transforming the relationship between the government and the citizen because the communication goes both ways, highlight the positives and negatives of everyday life and expose us all to new opportunities and new risks. Social media isn’t going away and local authorities can help their staff by discussing and agreeing guidelines for acceptable use.

Social Networking Ban For Chorley Councillors What the article actually states is that Chorley councillors have been banned from using their mobile phones during council meetings so that they are focused on the discussions which makes perfect sense to me.

Possibly more controversial is the rift over allotments plans following a council chief executive’s use of Twitter. 

Chancellor George Osborne has announced that funding for councils would be slashed by more than seven per cent a year until 2015. We are aware that Councils are going to have to make hard choices about their spending priorities. I believe that public debate about how the decisions are being made is very healthy in a democracy.

In a challenging post Social Networking: The Great Disruptor? Clay Shirky observed that “Markets don’t supply as much accountability as democracy demands“.

The reality is that conversations are taking place through social networking all the time and public sector bodies have a choice about whether they are part of the debates or not.

Public sector bloggers may wish to consider the guidance for journalists and staff on engaging in social media published recently by the Guardian. The Guardian’s guidelines listed below cover blogging, tweeting and the use of social media to allow it to “to maintain editorial standards and help create effective communities on the web”.
 1. Participate in conversations about our content, and take responsibility for the conversations you start.
2. Focus on the constructive by recognising and rewarding intelligent contributions.
3. Don’t reward disruptive behaviour with attention, but report it when you find it.
4. Link to sources for facts or statements you reference, and encourage others to do likewise.
5. Declare personal interest when applicable. Be transparent about your affiliations, perspectives or previous coverage of a particular topic or individual.
6. Be careful about blurring fact and opinion and consider carefully how your words could be (mis)interpreted or (mis)represented.
7. Encourage readers to contribute perspective, additional knowledge and expertise. Acknowledge their additions.
8. Exemplify our community standards in your contributions above and below the line.

An interesting commentary about the challenges of conversations being held in public through social media has been provided by Gordon MacMillan social media editor at Haymarket.

And finally help is at hand from the Social Media and Online Collaboration Community of Practice for Public Service.  You can access a whole range of social media policies which have been developed by public sector bodies in the UK and abroad. Well done to Ingrid Koehler Improvement Strategist at Local Government  Improvement and Development. You do need to join the group to access the policies. http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/welcome.do

Tags: public sector, social media, social media guidelines, social networking

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“Social media is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. All the time online conversations are happening about you, your brand and your organisation. It’s not a choice whether you DO social media, the choice is how well you do it”  Erik Qualman author of socialnomics.

Erik’s video Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) makes a powerful case for why organisations should have a social media strategy and be actively engaged with social networking. 

Social networking has the potential to put the “social” back into social work and social care. So it is interesting (and depressing) to note how few of our national care organisations are actually engaged and using social media to communicate important messages to an increasingly diverse group of stakeholders.

For me twitter really is the new information network because I am able to share and discover what is happening in the care sector right now. Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information and it is how I stay updated on an incredibly wide variety of topics.

If you’re wondering what’s the point and how to make the most of twitter a helpful guide from Charles Arthur in the Guardian about the benefits of twitter.

 It is also worth watching The Beginners Guide To Twitter Videofrom Andy Headworth which explains ’What Twitter is’, ‘What Twitter looks like’ and ‘How exactly you get started with Twitter’.

Who is currently on twitter? 

@BASW_UK

@CareQualityComm

@ChildrensComm

@steve_scie

@skillsforcare

Who is not on twitter?

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services

Association of Directors of Adult Social Services

Children’s Workforce Development Council.   

General Social Care Council

National Skills Academy for Social Care

The National Children and Adult Services Conference 3rd – 5th November 2010

Live streaming of keynote presentations, panel discussions and comments tweeted from participants are an increasing feature of conferences. The National Children and Adult Services Conference takes place in Manchester next week. Following the comprehensive spending review this will be an significant event as Directors consider the implications of the budget cuts for front line delivery. This is an ideal opportunity to widen the debate using twitter to encourage comments and questions about the complexity of the care sector.  

I am aware of only one director using twitter and I will be following @stephenslossStrategic Director of Adult Social Care & Health at Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council along with @lgaNCAS2010 and @CommunityCare for the latest news at the conference. If you know of any other Directors of Adults or Children’s Services using twitter do let me know!

To provide some encouragement to Social Services Directors you may wish to know about the increasing number of chief executives using  twitter (with thanks to @Council_Chiefs and the Tweetyhall blog Tweeting from the Top)

@johnbarradell  Chief Executive Brighton and Hove

@lwboland  Leo Boland Chief Executive Greater London Authority

@terryhuggins  Chief Executive of Breckland and South Holland Councils

@GibsonGav  Gavin Jones Chief Executive Swindon Borough Council

@ChairSolaceDerek Myers, Chief Executive of Kensington and Chelsea and the Chair of SOLACE

@andrewnorthcbc Chief Executive Cheltenham Borough Council

@martinrreevesof Chief Executive Coventry City Council

@tomriordan Chief Executive Leeds City Council

@DuncanSharkey  Managing Director at Worcester City Council

As a knowledge management and communications consultancy we are committed to empowering people through knowledge and developing skills through communication. About Shirley Ayres Consulting

Tags: ADASS, adcs, be inspired, NCAS2010, social care, social media, social work is complex and challenging, twitter

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As the Comprehensive Spending Review is now widely publicised, it’s a good time for local authorities to assess their internal communication processes to further support public sector staff in delivering measurable ‘outcome based’ activity.

To achieve this, internal communicators need to be fully equipped to manage employee engagement which is an essential component in fulfilling core objectives and improving workforce development.

The communication tools needed to achieve this are now numerous given the availability of social media, which has grown in popularity amongst local communities and businesses. Social media has also proven itself to be an inexpensive, efficient knowledge hub and communication tool that can be utilised by internal audiences.  

LinkedIn is a good example of this. Not only is it a global directory for business networking but a knowledge sharing site. Users are encouraged to freely create their own groups and to join others to raise stimulating debate on industry issues, leading to new connections and raised profiles.

Internal communicators could facilitate a similar site for employees by adopting features such as:

• Discussion  groups which could be issues led, encouraging  interactive use from both top down and bottom up
• Learning pools which encourage users to share best practice ideas and experiences  and
• Commentary from internal and external bloggers.

All of these features can improve efficiency to front-line services and support the reduction of administrative cost – encouraging ’self-generated’ knowledge-sharing and sign-posting.

Users would naturally see their profiles raised amongst their peers in ways they may not have been able to do so previously. This can help motivate staff to work towards common goals and fulfil the job they were employed to do. There are many more social media platforms that could be modified to suit any internal framework.

Making good use of these resources can be instrumental to improving employee engagement, and support ‘outcome-based’ solutions for practitioners.

About the author

Dianne Lowther is a qualified Public Relations educator with a deep understanding of the public and not for profit sectors. With over 10 years experience Dianne has had an extensive career working in the PR industry. A Director of Dwell PR  she advises on creating a presence for brands to build long-term relationships with clients and stakeholders. 

Contact: Dianne.Lowther@dwellpr.com

Tags: communications, Dianne Lowther, employee engagement, social media, workforce development

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In our recent publication The Architecture for Personalisation Kate Fulton and I explore how best local leaders, social workers especially, can promote personalisation. The challenge is to promote personalisation as if we really mean it, promoting citizenship, family and community – not developing it as some new industry which will just be applied to ordinary people.

Social workers are at the cutting edge of personalisation – both its successes and its failures. At best they are discovering that it can be a liberating force, an opportunity to help people create new, flexible and community-focused support solutions. At its worst it is becoming more work, more forms to fill in, more complicated rules and – although its hard to credit it – more panels to try and get through. It is perhaps not surprising, given the thoughtless way in which government has gone about promoting personalisation, that we should be in this situation, and there is nothing inevitable about it. Local leaders can still protect people and staff from the encroaching madness.

One key lesson is to be entirely honest about the resources we have. If personalisation means giving people the chance to build more creative solutions with limited resources then the same principles should also apply within our systems. We can begin by being honest about how much time and energy social workers actually have and help them focus that time on things that really add values. Our estimates show that there is probably an average of £700 of care management time available for each individual served. This is a significant but very modest amount of time and it won’t be used well if it is spent largely on filling in forms to feed the system itself.

The only way of making better use of this limited time is to follow the principle of trust. We need to trust people more:

1. Trust people and families more. Give people information, contacts, simple systems and let them get on with it. Letting people make mistakes, solve problems and control things themselves is the key to good social work.

2. Trust community more. Encourage services to connect to people to design services with them directly. Make sure people are connected to community organizations and peer support groups.

3. Trust social workers more. Let people focus on those who need most help. In particular let social workers use their judgement. If they know of a good service, let them refer people to it. If they can see a quick solution to a problem then let them set it up.

Everyone fears that others cannot be trusted. Experience even teaches us that sometimes trust will be abused – people will lie, cheat or just make human mistakes. But a system that doesn’t encourage trust is expensive, stupid and disabling – by trying to put in systems that stop people making mistakes we delude ourselves that processes and rules will do what humans can’t do for themselves or if we shift power and control away from people then we shift it away from the point at which it can do most good. When we expect solutions to come from ‘on high’ then we are really expecting solutions from those who are least able to understand what really needs to be done and who are already trying to do far too many things for far too many people.

Trust, delegation and empowerment are efficient and effective – make them central to all your strategies and your work.

Simon Duffy is Director of The Centre for Welfare Reform www.centreforwelfarereform.org whose recent publications include The Architecture for Personalisation, Personalised Support, Personalised Transition and Personalisation in Mental Health

Tags: empowerment, integrated working, personalisation, simon duffy, Social Work

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With over 600 hits on the Click Guide to Children’s Services webpage, the Guide has now been downloaded in 30 local authorities, 20 children’s charities, by universities, child minders, foster carers, training organisations and advocacy services. But we are being told by child care professionals in local authorities that they are being blocked from downloading the Guide.

I am not sure why some local authorities are stopping staff from accessing the internet. The Click Guide to Children’s Services is a free downloadable resource which, for the first time, brings together the wide range of resources for looked after children. It is a rich source of knowledge and information and demystifies the complexity of children’s services as well as being a signpost for useful online resources.

It appears that MessageLabs (an email filtering service that a lot of organisations are using) have marked our email messages as SPAM. We would advise you to contact your IT department asking them to ‘white list’ www.shirleyayresconsulting.co.uk or add the email address info@shirleyayresconsulting.co.uk to the approved senders list. IT departments should know what to do to make it happen.

If your local authority does not have a social media policy it is worth looking at the trailblazer Blackburn with Darwen guidance.

Contact us – we can help your local authority develop a social networking policy

The Click Guide to Children’s Services is our contribution to promoting joined up thinking across the care sector. We are now working on Guides to Personalisation and Workforce Development (which are due to be published November 2010).

Tags: Click Guide to Children's Service's, encouraging innovation, integrated working, shirley ayres consulting

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The very topical theme being explored at the Child Care History Network Autumn Conference 2010 to be held on November 11th 2010 in Gloucestershire.

Speakers include: Gudrun Limbrick of the Birmingham Children’s Homes project, Jim Goddard from the Care Leavers Association and the University of Bradford, Simon Hammond from the University of East Anglia, Craig Fees from the Planned Environment Therapy Trust, and Charles Sharpe from goodenoughcaring.

What online communication networks and tools are available for children, child care professionals, and former children in care to record and share their experiences? What is being used? What is on the horizon?

Can we, should we, and how can we, embrace the new forms of communication? What is gained if we do? What experiences and insights may be lost if we don’t?

Can these new media and technologies be a help for children, child care professionals, historians and archivists in remembering, recording, gathering and archiving child care experience and history – and if so, how?

Or, is there a healthy resistance among child care professionals, former children in care and others to embrace these new forms of communication, which should be listened to? In a world of accelerating dependence on online communication and record keeping, what choices do we really have?

What can we learn from projects and organisations which are already engaging with the new media, such as the Birmingham Children’s Homes oral history project, the Care Leavers’ Association, or the “Therapeutic Living With Other People’s Children” project? How can and how will the history, experience and practice of child care be impacted by the new online social networks and tools? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities?

Download the conference details

Find out more about the Child Care History Network  

Tags: Child Care History Network, children in care, social media

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