Understanding what works

The practice model has been built on seven elements. These are evocation, collaboration, autonomy, empathy, purposefulness, clarity about concerns, and child focus. These elements combine social work values and skills that can be measured as behaviours during practice.

In addition to practice observation, our internal research team have observed supervision sessions around the same cases and have developed a framework for measuring supervision quality, which appears to be linked to practice quality. Our emergent supervision framework has been shared with all practice supervisors, and in our CiN service all practice supervisors have had up to five observation and coaching sessions, which has significantly improved their understanding of, and skill in delivering, great supervision. Supervision coaching recently began in our CLA service, and we are currently training middle managers to observe and coach supervisors themselves.

What is measured has a huge impact on practice culture and Islington measures both the skills of social workers working directly with families and collects detailed feedback from parents and children. Practice reports collate learning from observation and coaching, with direct feedback from parents. Islington are also observing case supervision and grading it for effectiveness, providing coaching and feedback sessions for managers to help them improve their supervision.

An outcomes framework has been developed, but also a clearer understanding in our Senior Management Team around how to use data most effectively to improve outcomes for children and young people without adding unhelpful stress for social workers. Practice audits are focused around a six monthly cycle of practice weeks, where all senior leaders shadow a team and attend visits and meetings with social workers, then audit their cases alongside them. These activities have led to a significant culture shift in meetings where we discuss workforce performance and a deeper understanding of good and poor social work practice happening in Islington.

Sector improvement

1. Through their sector improvement offer, Islington is delivering support through a variety of areas including building a shared understanding of what good practice will look like, and how it will be measured using outcomes and process measures.
2. Building a shared understanding of leadership behaviours that should be observable consistently through the organisational hierarchy.
3. Developing a training, supervision, observation, and coaching system to support improvement of practice skills.
4. Building alignment and understanding with Council leaders and LSCB partners.
5. Building the capacity and quality of their quality assurance system to track and feedback performance across all areas of work.
6. Developing and aligning the Early Help strategy and performance framework, ensuring interface with statutory services is efficient and effective.
7. Building effective attraction, recruitment, and retention strategies for children’s social work staff.
8. Improving efficiency of the practice system through improved use of ICS and business support.