The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing provided an update of the review and restructure of Safeguarding and family Support Services that commenced in November 2014 to the Committee. 

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing explained that in November and December 2014 employees were consulted on proposals to re-structure the former Safeguarding and Family Support Service.  During the period of consultation, extensive feedback was received from individual employees and teams.  She added that consideration of the feedback from the consultation exercise consequently resulted in revisions being made to the proposed structure which was subject to a further consultation exercise in February and March 2015

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing informed Committee that the implementation of the new structure commenced in April 2015 and was completed in July 2015.  She added that staff from the previous five safeguarding teams were co-located within one of three newly formed safeguarding hubs- East, North and West of the county.  Each hub has a team manager who leads a team comprising of a deputy manager, senior practitioner, social workers, social work assistants and contact workers

She advised the Committee that a working group on recruitment and retention were tasked with focussing on:

·         Implementing the new staff structure;

·         Improving the learning and development arrangements;

·         Developing more attractive recruitment materials;

·         Marketing and promoting BCBC as an employer of choice;

·         Creating capacity by developing a flexible bank of qualified, experienced social workers who would be able to support the service if and when

required.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing advised that Investigating why people leave and obtaining accurate information could be difficult.  Therefore, in order to focus on the retention of the current workforce, a staff survey was undertaken in July/August 2015, the outcomes of which were being considered in addition to the routine exit interviews.  The survey was issued specifically to qualified social workers, senior practitioners, deputy team managers and team managers in the front line Safeguarding teams, and was undertaken over a four week period to gain a better understanding of employees’ views. The response rate was 69%, with 45 responses from a potential of 65.

The Corporate Director Social Services and Wellbeing informed members that it was recognised that a high number of newly qualified Social Workers had been recruited which meant that the overall number of Social Workers with less than two years’ experience continued to present a real challenge for the service.  She added that it also placed a pressure on managerial capacity to provide adequate support, which was essential to enable newly qualified Social Workers to become experienced and confident practitioners who would want to continue to work in BCBC. She advised that additional measures had been put in place to support the newly qualified Social Workers so that they were better equipped to undertake the role and feel more confident and resilient; these included:

·         The First Year in Practice programme has been updated and is being implemented on a mandatory basis;

·         Consultant Social Workers based in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 119