Our workforce is our most valuable asset in our work with children, young people and their families. There are over 6000 people who work with children and young people across North East Lincolnshire. This includes people who are from professional backgrounds such as social work, health, education, early years, youth support services, the police, fire service and youth justice and those teams that support them and there are many more people who volunteer their time to offer activities or support to children and young people and get involved in our local community working with families. At their best, these people can offer the opportunity to transform the lives of those they work with.
The Government’s vision for strategy and practice in working with children and young people is
‘Those that work in children’s services should be valued as skilled professionals and encouraged to be ambitious for every child and young person. Working practices should be integrated and show a commitment to partnership. These practices should be supported by a management structure that encourages inter agency co-operation which is particularly useful for children and young people accessing multiple services’
Locally, within our Children and Young People’s Plan 2011-14 we are committed to ensuring services work together to:
• Provide families with support at the earliest opportunity
• Meet the full range of needs within each family they are supporting or working with
• Develop services which can respond to the most challenging families
• Strengthen the ability of family members to provide care and support to each other
We know from our consultations across the workforce that locally we have a measured, controlled approach to integrated working and within this process have used and developed our CAF process. We have some good practice examples of working co-operatively with partners in achieving outcomes for children and young people and families and we have identified a high level of commitment and enthusiasm by our practitioners and their managers. We have the training frameworks available to support the safeguarding agenda and to support effective integrated working and improve the quality of practice. However, we also know that there is a lot more to do to deliver the best possible outcomes for our children and young people.
Delivering our vision for the future demands a confident, capable and well trained workforce that can identify problems early and intervene effectively, bringing their own specialist skills expertise and insight to support children young people and their families. This workforce development strategy will support the partners that make up the Children’s Trust in North East Lincolnshire to work together effectively to ensure those who need additional support have exactly the right professionals needed to support them. This document outlines the actions that will take forward the changes required to prepare the workforce for the challenges ahead. We want a well qualified children’s workforce who are empowered and enthusiastic and ready to take on the responsibility of improving outcomes and who are directed by high quality leaders and managers.
Working together in this way they will deliver improved outcomes, and work towards empowering children, young people and their families to become independent and make choices that will give them the opportunity to have a good life and achieve their full potential.
To download the full Children's Workforce Development Strategy please see the right hand side of this page.