Be Inspired! Shirley Ayres Consulting

A conference for CAMHS commissioners, Looked after children’s Nurses, Children in Care officers, designated GPs and other professionals interested in developments around Children and Young People’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing.

Friday 16th October
Wellcome Collection Conference Centre, 183 Euston Road, London NW 1 2BE
 
The Government Office for London are bringing together professionals within Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts to share innovation, successes and learning to help improve health outcomes for London’s Children in Care. This event will focus on highlighting successful examples of transferable practise from across London. This wll be set within a context of national policy development and regional initiatives including the London Pledge for Children and Young People in Care.

Places are limited to 3 per each London Authority for this free conference. Register your interest by emailing Nigel.Barker@gol.gsi.gov.uk. The deadline for registration is Friday 9th October.
 
http://www.gos.gov.uk/gol

Young London Matters – Making Every London Child Matter is a very useful resource for sharing information about children and young people’s services in London.

The London Pledge for Children and Young People in Care sets ambitious goals to deliver the best possible outcomes for children in care. The Pledge aims to ensure that children and young people in care across London have equal access to the same range of key services and support wherever they live, go to school or access employment or training opportunities in London. The Pledge is supported by all of the Children’s Trusts in London .

http://younglondonmatters.org/home

Tags: advanced social work practice, encouraging innovation, Learning and Development

Related Posts:

• 2010 – new decade, new challenges – what needs to change in social work and social care?
• Improving social work practice through post qualifying education and training
• TED inspirational ideas worth spreading
• Social work practitioners develop a caseload management system
• Launch of the Advanced Social Work Practice Network on LinkedIn

Are there lessons for social work in this recent posting on the HR website? As the debate rages about how to improve social work services on the front line the big question for me is how we empower and motivate staff to deliver consistently high quality services. What needs to change to encourage innovation and creativity amongst such a diverse workforce?

The lack of leadership is constantly quoted as a major problem for care services but what sort of leadership is required?  Is leadership different from management? For me an emphatic YES. Leaders use passion and ideas to lead people. Leadership is about creating change.

We have known what the problems are in social work for many years so what is stopping change from happening? There is a consistency in the key messages and recommendations contained in the plethora of government reports following major failures in the care system.

Five ways to make a difference in your organisation:

Step One

Listen, communicate and engage with your workforce.

Step Two

Make a reality of the oft quoted phrase “Our people are our greatest asset” by developing, implementing and monitoring your workforce development strategy

Step Three

Encourage, nurture and grow your staff by offering a range of learning opportunities which take advantage of new technology.

Step Four

Get rid of the blame culture and encourage the senior management team to foster debate and encourage new ways of thinking and approaches to seemingly intractable problems. Do not be afraid of critical friends.

Step Five 

Recognise and develop the unique skills and talents of your workforce. Actively seek and encourage feedback and let everyone know how their thoughts and comments are making a difference to the delivery of services.

‘Talent’ may be HR’s buzz word du jour but a poll conducted for Human Resources finds that only 9% of workers think their business uses this word to describe its people.

Nearly 70% of respondents to the survey, by Harris Interactive, say talent is not an expression used. Asked if they think their employers see them as talented individuals, 42% of workers say no and a further 23% are not sure. Just 16% say yes, but only as a means to an end – so employers can get more work out of them.

A mere 11% say they are personally regarded as ‘the future’ of their organisation, with nearly half (48%) saying ‘no, not all’ to this question. Some 55% of the 1,187 employees polled say that, to their knowledge, their skills are not recorded on any talent management system.

Women are significantly more likely than men to say their organisation uses the word talent (75% vs 63%). They are also more likely to say they are not regarded as the future in their organisation (50% vs 47%).

View the comments at

http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/news/bulletin/weeklyupdatebulletin/article/911942/?DCMP=EMC-Dailynewsalert

Tags: connecting with your staff, creativity, critical friend, empowerment, encouraging innovation, Leadership and Management, workforce engagement

Related Posts:

• TED inspirational ideas worth spreading
• Is social work ready for the social media revolution? How to become LinkedIn
• Guest Blog: Why personalisation can only be achieved through creative engagement
• 2010 – new decade, new challenges – what needs to change in social work and social care?
• Guest Blog A simple message about Personalisation “Trust More”