Social Care - shaping up for modernisation and personalisation

Birmingham City Council - Adults and Communities Directorate, Physical disability services

“We would like to thank you for the delivery of an excellent programme .It was by no means an easy brief, with all the challenges of timing given our then, imminent restructure of service. It has posed many challenges to both social work staff and managers. In terms of feedback it has been perceived by staff as extremely beneficial and enabled reflection of practice assumption. It has also had a positive impact in respect of facilitating feelings of staff and will play its part in service building. Many thanks to you for the professional skill you contributed.”

Lloyd Wedgbury
Operations Manager - PD Services Redesign
Physical Disabilities Services - Vulnerable Adults/Younger Adults
Adults and Communities Directorate

This 2 stage learning and development programme was commissioned to underpin an extensive process of change resulting from the modernisation of services to younger, disabled adults, and in preparation for personalisation and self-directed support late in 2009. The overall aim was to develop a new leadership team and raise the standard of social work assessment practice, decision making and recording in order to maximise both people and financial resources within the service.

Co-designed and co-delivered with the customer, the programme assisted to:

Build management and leadership capacity to support the new model
Co-create a new culture and agreeing 'party lines'
Engage and involve staff and managers and develop team cohesiveness
Define new relationships and new ways of working in ambiguity
Invest in team development and alignment
Re-establish the baseline social work values and skills
Improve assessment competency in social work teams

The second phase of the programme, following the introduction of personal budgets, consolidated and embedded the learning, reviewed the outcomes and provided a vehicle for exploring ongoing development.

The customer valued our sound knowledge base in relation to the social work agenda and said "it helped to make challenging objectives so much easier. It was a full engagement in true partnership working"