In Hertfordshire county council’s adult care department, a reinvestment in frontline social work is allowing service users to live healthier, happier lives – and growing a workforce that feels energised, inspired and supported.
The local authority is using its grant related to the newly introduced Care Act to recruit 90 new members of staff – an increase in headcount of around 15% – to help give employees the time and freedom to be truly imaginative with the people they work with, creating care plans that keep them engaged with the community and draw on their personal strengths.
Practitioners, social workers and occupational therapists are all needed, as well as deputy and team managers, to make sure the small teams Hertfordshire prides itself on are maintained.
“I really think if you put more time into having proper conversations with people, good assessments, good care plans, and imaginative options, people will be happier – and that will show through in our results,” says Iain MacBeath, director of health and community services. “It’s a calculated investment that if we give staff a little bit more social work time to think about all the options that are there for people, they will make connections we couldn’t have planned in a quick way, and we’ll probably spend less on care.”
An important part of that is freeing staff up through a dramatic cutback on form-filling. Since the Care Act came in at the beginning of April, the local authority has halved the paperwork they need to do by shortening the forms. “In the past we had a tick box or narrative box for every possibilty,” says MacBeath. “It’s now much more conversational.”
Mark Harvey, social work and communities lead in health and community services, has already worked with learning the local authority’s learning disability teams to embed the new ethos, and is now starting the journey with staff who work with older people.
“It’s about allowing social workers to be social workers and turning away from the kind of industrialised approach that we’ve seen across the country in the last decade or so,” he says.
“The first question will not be ‘what’s wrong with you, what do you need?’, it’s ‘tell us about you, what do you want to do?’
“For the learning disability teams everything social workers do with people must have some kind of citizen outcome – that means people being involved, productive members of the community.”
One example that epitomises the approach is of a young man who was given help to get involved with a local “guerilla gardening” style group – rather than just work on the gardens at his residential home. “What comes from that is that he’s now building proper relationships and friendships with people in the community,” says Harvey.
Hertfordshire is particularly keen attract social workers who want to come back after time away from the profession, but who would normally face considerable personal cost to do so because their registration has lapsed and they need to rebuild their continuing professional development record before they can re-register.
To overcome this, successful applicants are being offered a return to practice course that will get them back up to speed within weeks. There’s also a conversion course for people who left social work from a different field – for instance mental health, probation or children’s social work.
It’s a great county to work in, MacBeath says. “Hertfordshire is nearer to London than people think; our main bases in Hemel Hempstead and Stevenage are 20 minutes on the train to London.
“The buildings are new and modern, and lovely to work in, and you can expect your team to be no bigger than eight care practitioners to one manager.”
A new “enabling the worker” programme will see staff given iPads with all the applications they need to record case notes, look at financing, and access websites they might need for care planning. “It means they don’t have to come into the office every day,” MacBeath says. “We’ve got 14 ‘touch down’ bases around the county where people can dock, print off material, and have meetings. We encourage people to be mobile. They get their work and it’s up to them when and how they do it.”
Plus there are five days extra holiday for social workers and occupational therapists, giving a total of 35 days a year, and car loans and lease cars are available too. “We win a lot of awards and we’re well-respected nationally,” says MacBeath. “We’re a terrific county to work for.”
Sallie Deary, an occupational therapist in the North Hertfordshire extended involvement team, agrees. She had left the local authority several years earlier to work in PR, but returned last August after a chance meeting with her old boss, who encouraged her to return as a community care officer so she could build up the number of supervised days needed before she could re-register as an OT.
“I’d previously thought about returning a lot because I did miss it,” Deary explains. “But every time I’d tried to find a way to get back it just looked too difficult.”
Having the support of the team at Hertfordshire made all the difference. “There was a lot to take on board but they have been brilliant,” she says. “Whenever courses have been on offer they’ve said ‘yes, go’.”
Being able to work flexibly is a huge benefit, Deary says. “You have your working hours but you can work from home which is so helpful, because it’s a very large county. Not having to go into the office saves time – you get more done.
“I find Hertfordshire very proactive, supportive and forward thinking – all that motivational stuff that keeps you wanting to do more.”
For more information about working for Hertfordshire county county council, visit the dedicated website; for the Hertfordshire section on Guardian Jobs, click here
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