The purpose of this report is to update the committee on the workforce challenges in children’s services and to outline the work being undertaken to address those challenges.

The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development introduced the report and the attached appendices, noting that the employment survey summary from 2022 at Appendix C was the most recent set of data available. The next staff survey had just been released and new information from that would be available in the autumn of 2024.

 

The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development pointed out that significant improvements had been made and that the service was in a much better position than it had been three years ago, but there was still much work to be done.

The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development highlighted the need to be relentless in everything being done to tackle workforce challenges and was confident that the plan in place would get the service where it needed to be.

 

The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development identified the greatest challenge currently faced, as dealing with the service’s reputational issues and the potential damage that had been done to its ability to recruit. There had only been limited success in telling a positive story about improvements in the service outside of the council and addressing that would be a priority going forward.

 

The Committee discussed and asked questions about the report as detailed below:

 

1.    The committee thanked the director for the report and pointed out that sufficiency and stability of staff within the workforce was a key aspect of the Improvement Plan and was at the heart of work being done to ensure and provide a good service for children, parents and families within Herefordshire.

 

2.    The committee enquired about the risk, in terms of the impact on children in Herefordshire, of not getting the children and young people workforce strategy right.

·         The Service Director explained that restorative practice training was going very well and 500 workers had received the training, however, without a permanent and stable workforce there would be a continuous stop-start element to the training, which would hamper progress.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that over the last two years children and families had often had numerous different social workers assigned to their cases and that each time the social worker changed or moved on the family and child had to retell their story.

·         The Service Director emphasised the importance of having a permanent workforce in place as this would enable the restorative framework and practice model to be fully embedded, which would provide traction going forward. It was noted that staff in the MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub) were fully permanent, fostering services staff were almost fully permanent and that all team managers would, hopefully, be permanent by July 2024.

·         There were still challenges relating to historic reputational damage, especially in relation to the court team and children in care staff. The recent change of Director of Corporate Services had created some temporary unsettlement amongst staff, but this had been a blip and the service had turned a corner, with two team managers having recently been recruited.

 

3.    The Committee enquired how it would be possible to determine and demonstrate that the workforce strategy was making a difference.

 

4.    The Committee asked who the workforce strategy was for, who would be using it and what they would be expected to do with it.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development explained that there was an overarching corporate workforce strategy that covered the whole council and that this was a strategy specifically for the children and young people workforce.

·         It was explained that a second strategy specifically for the children and young people workforce was in place, as the LGA (Local Government Association) recommended this as good practice.

·         The children and young people workforce strategy fitted in and dovetailed with the main corporate document, but was essentially a pitch to the workforce, which explained what people could expect in terms of management practice and culture within the service. The document could be used by the union and employees as a means of holding the council to account as an employer.

·         In terms of measuring the impact of the children and young people workforce strategy, this would be contained and covered off within the action plan, which sat under the workforce delivery board, which itself would be monitored by the children’s improvement board.

 

5.    The Committee enquired whether it was an oversight that the Corporate Workforce Strategy contained various sections for measuring and monitoring progress, whilst the Children and Young People Workforce Strategy didn’t.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development acknowledged the omission of sections for measuring progress within the current draft Children and Young People Workforce Strategy and stated such sections could be incorporated in the final document.

 

6.    The Committee noted the focus on mental health contained within the wellbeing section of the Children and Young People Workforce Strategy compared to the broader set of wellbeing issues identified in the Corporate Workforce Strategy. The Committee asked why there was a difference and sought clarity as to whether the broader set of issues identified in the corporate strategy were applicable to the children and young people document.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development explained that all of the wellbeing issues identified in the Corporate Workforce Strategy were applicable to the Children and Young People Strategy, but that addressing mental illness had been emphasised in the children and and young people workforce document because stress was the highest cause of absence in children’s services and was particularly pertinent to that audience.

 

7.    The Committee suggested that it might be useful to make the links between the council’s Corporate Workforce Strategy and its Children and Young People Workforce Strategy more explicit.

 

8.    The Committee noted it was clear what the challenges were and clear what the strategy was, but that it was not clear why the strategy adopted was felt to be the right strategy. The Committee enquired as to which factors had informed the development of the strategy.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that over the last 15 months they had been running a group called ‘Aiming High, which brought together the voices of permanent workers who had been through previous leadership groups, so that the staff could provide feedback about what they wanted. Running concurrently with this was a group called the ‘Staff Reference Group’ which provided all workers with the opportunity to feedback on their priorities.

·         Workers from both the Staff Reference Group and Aiming High groups were shown the draft strategy and had reported that they felt it looked good and spoke to them as social workers. Feedback was also invited from wider teams within the service and this had been very positive, with particular praise for the look of the strategy and its delivery targets.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that one of the challenges faced was ensuring that when applications were sent out that they also included a promise of what would be provided from the local authority. Social workers often wanted details regarding the local authority’s practice model, and the strategy clearly set out what these were.

 

9.    The Committee asked if there was currently an induction process in place to ensure that agency staff were working with and using the same practice model as everybody else, especially in relation to areas such as restorative practice.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that prior to people starting, there would be an interaction between managers and social workers to immediately build a relationship. Once a person had joined the service, there was: a corporate day that all members of staff went through, a second service day which covered the practice model and the systems and then a service specific day that would be bespoke and focused on areas relevant to staff in different sections such as fostering, the MASH or looked after children. The service specific training often extended beyond one day to cover areas such as information governance and Mosaic (the Council’s care management system) training.

·         The training had changed and developed over the last few months and conversations about training and induction were ongoing, with the recruitment team listening to and acting on feedback from staff who had recently undertaken the training.

 

10.  The Committee raised concerns that the document would be helpful for recruitment and exiting staff, but lacked strategic details relating to areas such as: key performance indicators, resource and finance implications, strengths and weaknesses assessments and clear deliverable actions. The Committee enquired as to whether this information sat within the action plan that had been referred to earlier in the meeting.

 

11.  The Committee suggested that were similarities, in terms of aspirations, between the draft strategy being presented and those of previous years. The Committee asked what lessons had been learned from previous strategies, what was being done differently and what new things were being done to ensure that the strategy was more successful.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development responded that they felt the strategy was a first for children’s services in terms of its format and the way it pitched the service’s story to the workforce. It was explained that certain strategic details had been omitted intentionally, but that there was clear action plan that underlined the work. The Director noted that adding links for key performance indicators and other relevant information might be useful in telling the story in a complete way.

 

12.  The Committee, asked for clarity on what had been learned from previous attempts to recruit and what was being done differently this time.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained there was a separate recruiting team, which handled onboarding and advertising, as well as making sure there was a swift response to the requirements and requests of agency and permanent workers. Historically, recruiting agency workers had been challenging and at one point the service had had to resort to taking on four managed teams, which consisted of an agency manager overseeing a team of agency staff. It was explained that managed teams had been hugely costly and that as of February 2024 the service had been able to move away from employing teams of this nature.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support stated that two years ago the application process had required internal and external applicants to complete lengthy forms detailing all of their qualifications. The new strategy had been co-produced with staff, based on feedback regarding frustrations around the old process, and now focused on curriculum vitaes. Internal staff looking to change to a different post could now do so by expressing an interest through a conversation with the relevant manager - this had helped significantly with retention of existing staff and had created a culture of trust. It was noted that having permanent managers and service managers in place had greatly improved staff confidence in the service and had acted as a springboard for recruitment.

 

13.  The Committee praised the format of the strategy document and noted that the outward-facing style and content of the document spoke to both external applicants and existing staff.

 

14.  The Committee praised the work that had been done, as detailed in Appendix A, highlighting the move from high levels of agency staff towards permanent workers and hoped this would reduce scenarios where families and children had to to retell their stories to multiple workers.

 

15.  The Committee enquired how much progress the service felt it had made in addressing concerns highlighted by staff in the 2022 workforce survey.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support responded that a recent survey of occupational therapists, social workers and residential workers had been positive about many areas including: wellbeing support, useful supervision from team managers, being able to freely share work concerns, and being treated fairly and respectfully. Other positive feedback from the survey included social workers stating they felt physically and emotionally safe at work, and staff stating that they had access to reasonable adjustments. Many staff had stated that they would recommend their employer to a friend.

·         There had been some challenges highlighted by staff through the survey, which included issues around compliance with internal procedures, feeling excessive pressure to do more with less resources and the organisation not always setting a good example of how to do things.

·         Staff surveying and feedback would be ongoing and would feedback into groups via manager meetings, where the teams set the agenda and took things forward – this gave staff ownership of the change rather than having it dictated to them as was the previous approach.

 

16.  The Committee noted that the staff survey results at Appendix C showed that the largest staff area service group was the safeguarding quality assurance and improvement area (at 246 members of staff, which was roughly 50% of the workforce) but only 4% of this group had responded to the 2022 survey. The Committee asked what actions had been undertaken since 2022 to explain to staff the importance of the surveys and feedback tools, and what had been done to encourage staff to engage with the process in 2024.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development explained that there were two service areas that began with the word safeguarding. The staff from those two teams had likely misidentified where they worked when filling in the survey. This had led to a very low (4%) response rate for safeguarding quality assurance and improvement, and a very high (97%) response rate for safeguarding and family support. The assumption was that the actual response rate for both teams was an average of these figures.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development pointed out that the 2024 survey made it much easier for staff to self-report where they worked.

·         In terms of encouraging staff to respond, the 2024 survey was being widely publicised via the council’s intranet. A rolling ‘you said we did’ webpage, which had been updated regularly over the last two years, showed people what had been done in response to staff feedback since the last survey.

·         The introduction of a coaching culture approach for managers, a new management induction programme and a new leadership group had ensured managers were clearer on their roles and responsibilities, and that everyone received the same message about how to support and manage their teams.

·         It was highlighted that more people had responded to the 2024 survey on day one than had responded to the 2022 survey in its first week.

 

17.  The Committee asked about the rate of agency staff moving into permanent positions.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development explained that typically no agency workers would switch to a permanent role for financial reasons, but the authority was financially attractive to permanent workers and offered a competitive pay package. Some agency staff did want to convert to permanent roles and a recent survey had shown that 28% of the current agency workers had stated they would consider staying with the authority, but that location was the biggest barrier. Unfortunately location was a largely non-negotiable area, because frontline social work needed to take place on a face-to-face basis.

 

18.  The Committee enquired whether it was considered beneficial for the service to have a certain number of agency staff in place to allow for flexibility.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development acknowledged the good work carried out by agency staff and the usefulness of them in initially filling newly created roles within the service. However it was stated that there was no deliberate strategy for retaining agency workers and ideally the service would reach a point where it was staffed 100% with permanent workers. However the reality was that an 80% permanent and 20% agency proportional split would be achieved within the next two and half years, in accordance with the savings plan.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support provided the Committee with an overview of the financial modelling within the service and how that impacted staff ratios and the budget.

 

19.  The Committee enquired as to whether it was possible to qualify as a social worker within Herefordshire.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that qualified social workers were not attending courses within Herefordshire and the courses were instead delivered in Birmingham, Worcestershire and Coventry. They had just had two cohorts of ASYE (Advanced and Supported Year in Employment) students go though in March and June, with a further seven starting immediately. All of the AYSE students had remained with the service. It was explained that during the programme, the students worked on site and often lived within Herefordshire, but were funded by the local authority to commute to their surrounding university for one or two day as required.

 

20.  The Committee asked how much of the workforce were based in Herefordshire 100% of the time.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development explained that of the permanent workforce 77% lived within Herefordshire and 94% of them lived within Herefordshire or a surrounding county.

 

21.  The Committee highlighted the good work carried out by agencies in the voluntary community sector and suggested that these agencies would be key in repairing the service’s reputational damage and restoring trust within the local community. The Committee asked what investment was being provided to get the workforce in these agencies up to speed, so that they might become future social workers and apprentices.

·         The Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, stated that they had been in conversations with third party and community organisations to discuss where there were effective working relationships and where they needed to build on those relationships.

 

22.  The Committee noted that the report identified challenges around having sufficient local capacity to respond to the high demand for social work apprenticeship places and asked what was being done to address the situation.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that apprenticeships had to be costed and there had to be capacity to take them on and train them, but there was a shortage of practice educators, which made recruitment challenging.

·         The service was working with universities and colleges, and a discussion had taken place at the SEND (Special Education Needs and Disability) Assurance Board to discuss how organisations across Herefordshire could join together to help and assist one another in tackling recruitment challenges.

·         The service was working with local and neighbouring organisations, the Wye Valley Trust and the ICB (Integrated Care Board) to develop models of good practice. Initial work had focused on getting the structures in place and future campaigns would look to address how to bring youth forward within the locality.

 

23.  The Committee sought clarity on whether capacity to respond to the demand for social work apprenticeships remained a challenge.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support responded that it was a multifaceted challenge that would require a greater number of teams and practice educators to build on. The service currently had the optimum amount of workers in training based on the size of the teams.

 

24.  The Committee enquired if a reduction in the number of posts within the service would result in a reduction of apprenticeships.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support responded that this wouldn’t be the case.

 

25.  The Committee enquired as to whether the service was engaging with and building links with young people through schools via work experience and mock interviews and suggested this might be a useful tool to encourage children to consider a career in the service.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development confirmed that the service was involved in work experience and running mock interviews with pupils from local schools.

 

26.  The Committee asked how much was being learned from exit interviews with departing staff and whether more work needed to be done in the area.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development stated that more work was needed in this area. A corporate exit survey was available to all staff and provided a limited degree of information. There was also an additional separate process for children services, whereby a principal social worker would meet with people exiting the service. A lack of principal social workers to carry out exit interviews had created a data gap, but this had now been rectified. Since January the retention rate for qualified social workers was at 94%, so there were only small number leaving, however the data gap had made it difficult to establish why those people had  left.

 

27.  The Committee suggested that, in reference to Appendix A, it might be helpful to provide target numbers required for social workers, team managers and other groups.

 

28.  The Committee asked for a background as to what drove the historic requirement for more agency staff.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support gave an overview of what had occurred in the service over the last three years, including challenging court and Ofsted judgements and the sudden departure of the senior leadership team, which resulted in caseload management problems. The situation had now calmed, caseload rates matched those of statistical neighbours and relations with the judiciary were healthy.

·         The Corporate Parenting and Improvement Boards were monitoring progress and the service was in a much better place than it had been two to three years ago. The service had stabilised and was now in a position where it could begin to focus on showing how improvements were impacting on families and children.

 

29.  The Committee asked whether the service benchmarked itself against local authorities that had turned around inadequate assessments.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that the service didn’t benchmark specifically against authorities that had turned around inadequate assessments, but did benchmark everything against statistical neighbours and English national averages. Consideration was always given to incorporating any reasonable and practical approach that had been adopted by surrounding authorities.

 

30.  The Committee asked if the strategy had been informed by the Leeds Council Recruitment and Retention Strategy.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that partners at Leeds Council had checked the strategy and hadn’t suggested any specific changes, but every general idea that had been put forward by partners from Leeds had been incorporated into the approach.

 

31.  The Committee asked if there was a capping agreement in place for agency fees.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development explained that the local authority was part of a memorandum of understanding, which involved local authorities coming together and agreeing a pay rate level they would not go beyond for agency workers, which stopped the authorities competing with each other. Due to exceptional circumstances Herefordshire local authority had had to agree an exemption from this with neighbours within the region, but the ambition was to revert to paying the agreed rate.

 

32.  The Committee asked if there were plans in place to reduce the amount of bureaucracy and paperwork that staff had to contend with.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained it was a paperwork intensive service. The Mosaic system (the Council’s care management system) had undergone an overhaul and business support was now assisting with tasks such as producing minutes for meetings.

·         The viability of using artificial intelligence-based note taking software was being investigated. A business support review was currently underway and staff feedback was being taken on board and implemented where appropriate.

 

33.  The Committee noted that staff voices had been involved in the development of the strategy, but enquired if and how the voices of children and young people had been involved.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that young people had not been involved, as the strategy was about workforce, but children had been involved in the development of other service strategies.

 

34.  The Committee asked if consideration had been given to writing the strategy to address children, as this had been used to powerful effect with certain Scottish Government national policies.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support noted this and agreed to consider such an approach.

 

35.  The Committee relayed concerns from foster carers that they didn’t feel like part of the team. The committee noted that foster carers were not employees, but asked whether some reference to foster carers might help them to feel more part of the team and also emphasise their importance to service staff.

·         The Cabinet Member for Children and Young People stated they would take that away for further discussion and that engagement with foster carers continued through events such as the Fostering Fortnight.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support pointed out that there was a recruitment strategy for foster carers and that there had been a recent needs analysis carried out by the Fostering Network, along with a diagnostic by the Department for Education, which would be brought together in one strategy and cascaded.

 

36.  The Committee suggested that it might be helpful to formally or informally acknowledge foster carers as an extension of the workforce and that it might be helpful in retaining foster families in the same way that the authority had done with its own employees.

 

37.  The committee suggested developing a term to help people differentiate between preventative early help and early help within the professional framework.

 

38.  The Committee enquired about what tools and information were available to staff to ensure that they always knew who was responsible for particular functions. It was asked if the information was maintained and updated in the information management systems that staff used to document cases, so they didn’t end up being unable to complete documentation because they didn’t have necessary information.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that the practice standards provided information about responsibilities and which manager or level of management needed to agree certain actions. In most instances decisions would be approved by the line manager of an individual, but in more nuanced situations the line manager might direct the decision to an appropriate manager or individual. 

·         Guidance and practice standards were useful training tools and the practice standards document had recently been revised and was being cascaded out, however it was noted that a significant amount of learning came from engaging with others.

 

39.  The Committee asked if there was a disconnect between certain levels of management and staff, and if/how agile working had had an impact on professional relationships within the workplace.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that visibility played an important role in establishing relationships and understanding the managerial structure of the service. The nature of the work often necessitated an agile working approach, but there was an expectation that people would attend work in-person for at least two or three days a week depending on which role they held. Meetings, where possible, were also held in person.

·         Out of work team activities that developed during the Covid period, such as picnics and other team building activity, were encouraged.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that bringing people back into the office gave them an opportunity to discuss any wellbeing issues they were experiencing face-to-face and provided a potential pressure release mechanism for discussing any significant trauma.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development pointed out that the type of work dictated which location it was performed in, although the needs of the council, children and families would always come first. It was pointed out that the service had to offer flexible working arrangements for its workforce, because if it didn’t then other surrounding authorities would. 

 

40.  The Committee suggested that recruitment campaigns should emphasise the development opportunities for potential recruits joining a service that was steadily improving from a historic position of being inadequate.

 

41.  The Committee suggested that a system of quality circles (where staff could talk freely and anonymously about workplace issues away from management) should be adopted to help gather meaningful feedback.

 

42.  The Committee asked about what methods were being used to publicise and highlight good news stories regarding improvements within the service.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development explained that the service was planning to recruit to a dedicated temporary role that would involve changing the public perception of the service and highlighting the positive improvements that had and were being made.

 

43.  The Committee asked about the impact of restorative practice on workforce demands and whether it had been built into the strategy.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that restorative training session were being delivered in full and half day blocks and were run at different times to suit the needs of different workers. Sessions were being recorded so that staff could view them at their convenience.

·         Regarding impact, a review of a number of cases within the court and child protection services had found that some of the restorative practice was beginning to show through for families/children and that significant changes in work practice were in evidence.

·         There had been a notable reduction in the number of children on child protection plans, with more children being supported at a much earlier point in the process, which indicated the restorative practice was having a calming impact on the system.

·         Going forward the impact would be measured by both data and feedback from families.

 

44.  The Committee asked if the restorative practice had had a positive impact on culture within the workforce itself.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support highlighted the changes within group supervision, the way that managers were talking to others and a reduction in grievances, as positive signs that the restorative practice training was starting to have a positive impact on the workplace culture. It was acknowledged that there was still a long way to go in this area.

 

45.  The Committee enquired as to when the Improvement Plan rating for impact would change from red to demonstrate that tangible progress was being made.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support stated that the service had turned a corner and was definitely seeing better recruitment performance. It was anticipated that the move away from agency to permanent staff, along with expected positive feedback from families and the workforce should soon tangibly demonstrate the positive impact and change that had occurred within the service. Data showing how many children were being worked with restoratively and how many children were in a different part of the service would also act as a key indicator of impact.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development stated that there were three indicators that needed to be reported to the Improvement Board on and they were: the proportion of agency workers, the proportion of team managers that were permanent and caseloads. Once those three indicators were healthier, then that would have a positive impact on the Improvement Plan rating.

 

46.  The Committee stated that to assist in measuring and assessing the impact of strategies, it would be helpful to have a theory of change/logic model in place, which would monitor the path of changes, expectations and outcomes. It was pointed out that there was a Local Government Association guide available for using theory of change.

·         The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development stated that the service didn’t currently use such models, but that the Committee could put that forward as a recommendation.

 

At the conclusion of the debate, the committee discussed potential recommendations and the following resolutions were agreed.

 

Resolved: That Herefordshire Council:

 

1.    identifies measures of success for each of the strands in the children and young people workforce strategy.

2.    makes clear the links between the council’s corporate workforce strategy and its children and young people workforce strategy.

3.    builds links with and invests in local schools and voluntary organisations to encourage people to consider children's services as a career.

4.    encourages people to consider switching careers to Herefordshire Council’s children and young people directorate.

5.    ensures that the voice of children informs the children and young people workforce strategy

6.    describes the link between activity, outputs, outcomes and impact of the workforce strategy in terms of a theory of change.