Inspirational leadership, pioneering ways of working and placing children’s care at the top of the agenda have helped make Essex county council’s children’s services one of the best in England.
This January, Ofsted inspectors ranked the county’s children’s services as “outstanding” overall – one of only 4% in the country to gain the top achievement.
The inspector’s report makes for impressive reading. Its senior leaders are described as “inspirational” and are “ambitious” for its looked-after children. There is investment in “exceptional” early support for families, preventing them from spiralling into crisis and allowing more children to grow up in their own home. And there is also glowing praise for its 1,600 staff – including 800 social workers – working in family and children’s social care who, inspectors say, are “passionate” about the children they care for, are “sensitive” to their needs and “creative” in the solutions they find to deliver first-class care.
“Outstanding didn’t happen overnight – we’ve been working towards this for a long time; we’ve worked really hard at sustaining the things that are going well,” says Helen Lincoln, Essex’s executive director for children, families and education. “I have a real passion about social work. I started off as a social worker and I remember what enabled me to become a very good practitioner and the support that I needed. So what I have tried to do is be authentic in the way that we practise really good social work, to be clear about our vision and values and promoting lots of good work. Outstanding doesn’t mean we are perfect - but it does mean that things are going well.”
The council’s innovative practice, acknowledged by Ofsted, has also won national recognition. Essex is one of only 16 councils and organisations recruited to the Department for Education’s (DfE) partners in practice programme. It is providing peer support to 12 other children’s departments annually, to help boost outcomes and spread social work best practice. The national initiative brings together what the DfE says are the best practitioners and leaders in children’s services and the “strongest” councils, to enable “excellent practice to flourish”.
Innovations in practice highlighted by Lincoln include its divisional-based intervention team (D-BIT), which works with families and older children; it has helped more than 80% of teenagers stay within their kinship group and avoid being taken into care. Essex has also been at the forefront of developing “strength-based case conferences”. The model puts the family at the centre of decision-making, so they understand what social workers are concerned about and what the family feels it can do to bring about change.
Essex children’s department prides itself on being a learning organisation. Its managers are open to new ideas and the social work academy – which leads on training and development – delivers “inspirational and innovative” programmes, says Lincoln. “Creating training that is relevant is really important. Some training is developed by people working in the system who may have been with us for a while, who think if we did things this way it might work, so we can pilot [their] interventions.”
Covering 1,417 square miles, Essex is one of the UK’s larger counties, and has one of the largest children’s departments in the country, that offers unrivalled career paths and secondment options. Lincoln says: “People can spend their whole social work life in Essex and find that they do not do the same job for more than three years. Once people are in, and understand the Essex way of doing things, they stay.”
That view is confirmed by its established and stable children’s senior management team and by social workers who have joined the workforce – and stayed.
Nicola Newman, a senior practitioner in an assessment team, began her Essex career as a children’s home support worker, and later became a home manager. In 2011 the council provided funding for the Step Up to Social Work programme, where she trained to become a qualified social worker.
“Lots of the skills I’d learnt in the children’s home were transferrable to social work practice and the relationship-based practice we provide. I’d always wanted to be a social worker and Essex gave me that opportunity,” says Newman.
Newman has been supported at every stage of her career since qualifying. She’s completed master’s-level modules in child development and trauma, as well as looking at why children develop sexual harm behaviours. “Essex gives you the opportunity to develop those paths you are interested in. At the same time if I’m seeing a lot of children involved in child exploitation, then I can go to the academy and ask for training around that.”
Newman was also recruited to Essex’s “inspiring managers” programme – where would-be managers are mentored and supported to take their next career step. “It took me out of my comfort zone and expanded my thinking. I’m very focused on remaining in practice, but it made me more interested in becoming a manager in a role that would also allow me to continue to practise, such as a child protection case coordinator.”
Whatever her next career move, Newman knows it will be with Essex: “I feel very proud of our outstanding Ofsted ranking, as it means the service is outstanding across the county, not just in my own area. I’m definitely staying.”
