Understanding what works

Hampshire is transforming its service around five key principles:

• A family service – a system focussing on improving outcomes for the child in the context of their family
• A social work led, integrated, multi-disciplinary service, from the front door through to specialist services
• A service where social workers are supported to deliver meaningful interventions based on an underpinning methodology of resilience
• A service where good practice is free to flourish
• A service where children are supported by and within their own family/community wherever possible

Hampshire is re-designing its Children’s Social Care Service with a focus on three key areas:

• Family focused and evidence based practice – The Hampshire Approach is about providing the clarity, structure and evidence to guide practitioners in their interactions with families, and in doing so increase the resilience and wellbeing of the families we work with. The Hampshire Approach is based on a shared mind set and to support practitioners in translating the mind set into practice, we are prioritising five key areas. These are:

1. Relationship based practice
2. Strength based conversations
3. Working collaboratively
4. A bespoke assessment framework
5. Interventions which support wellbeing and resilience

• Dynamic and sustainable multi-disciplinary service – with buy-in and support from across agencies. Hampshire will be working to a single vision, with a single approach and to a single set of measures that put children and families first.
• Lean and effective service delivery and evidence based practice – Hampshire is reviewing its current processes and technology in order to enable front line staff to spend as much time as possible with children and families to support them to build resilience.

Sector improvement

Hampshire has used its role as a PiP to build and develop internal capacity and resilience in order to be able to effectively support, enable and build learning within the sector. Hampshire’s sector led offer will be developed and delivered in three phases, working in collaboration with regional partners to support the development of a culture of self-improvement within the sector. The phases are:

1. Phase 1 - offering support on establishing and managing an effective front door/MASH; effective performance management and quality assurance; and leadership and management. This is already underway.
2. Phase 2 - will be sharing their learning from their internal transformation, including the practice methodology and toolkit. This will be from September 2018, once they have implemented the changes within Hampshire. .
3. Phase 3 - which will be from later 2019, will be about supporting and achieving system wide change, including creating a diagnostic tool for use with authorities.

The first phase was launched in October 2017. Hampshire will be working alongside the South East authorities who are keen to share their learning.