Working Together: Aspiration or Reality Working Together: Aspiration or Reality? Joint Principal Social Workers’ Network Conference Monday 16 July The What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care: progress and plans Ewan King, Director, SCIE and Engagement Lead, WWC for Children’s Social Care Anna Bacchoo, Senior Social Worker, SCIE and WWC for Children’s Social Care

About the WWC for Children’s Social Care The WWC seeks better outcomes for children, young people and families by bringing the best available evidence to practitioners and other decision makers across the children's social care sector Funded by the DFE, the Centre is being set up by a development team and its research partner and will be fully independent by 2020 It will: Identify gaps in the evidence, and create new evidence through trials and evaluations Collate, synthesise and review existing evidence Develop, test and publish tools and services that support the greater use of evidence and inform the design of the future Centre Champion the application of robust standards of evidence in children's social care research

Engagement and co-design are central to our approach - we have engaged sector extensively

Key messages Help to foster a culture of learning Work with the sector, rather than ‘do to’ Keep children, young people and families at the heart Have a strong, realistic focus on implementation and improving practice, allowing for local context and nuance Explore what works to create the conditions for good social work Help to foster a culture of learning Be aware of the ‘joins’ with other agencies Learn from others, and do not duplicate Offer challenge, including to Government

Setting up the organisation Recruitment of new Chair: Sir Alan Wood Established Founding Board – Kersten England, CEO, Bradford Council; Isabelle Trowler, Chief Social Worker for England (Children and Families); Sally Hodges, DCS, Solihull Range of formal panels to feed into WWC development: Advisory Council Practitioners’ Panel VCS Forum CYP Panel Families and carers

Research topics Our initial research projects were selected following consultation with the sector and initial reviews of the literature. In the first instance, we will focus on one priority area and three exploratory areas for further work: Safely reducing the need for children to enter care Development topics: Supervision and decision-making The “front door”( local authorities’ arrangements for responding to safeguarding concerns) Workforce well-being, retention and turnover

Working with Local Partners Wave 1 Partners - July to December 2018 We have started working with 21 local authority partners to co-design and test promising tools and services that aim: to make research evidence more relevant make insights from research evidence more accessible help people to use evidence well help practice leaders to foster cultures in which effective evidence use is the norm. Wave 2 Partners – September 2018 to 2020

Working with local partners The first wave of partnership working will run from July – December 2018. Areas of focus: Developing digital tools for more effective working with data Developing a ‘DIY self-evaluation toolkit’ Exploring promising practice that might be evaluated with the Centre’s research partner Improving the accessibility and usefulness of website Developing a peer-to-peer networking tool through which evidence insights can be shared Developing an ‘evidence masterclass’ that aims to improve evidence literacy Developing a diagnostic tool to assess an organisation’s ‘evidence readiness’

Next steps and staying in touch Recruiting a senior leadership team Building strong alliances with the key stakeholders in our sector Bringing forward a five year strategy that includes securing a strong financial base for the WWC Laying out a clear map of the existing evidence base, and design a relevant and focused programme of research and evaluation that addresses the gaps and weaknesses Delivering programme to produce accessible, relevant evidence to the sector by promoting the work of the pioneer local authority partners and representing evidence of effective services from the DfE’s Innovation Programme.

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