Strategic Outcome 5
Continue to fully implement Getting it Right for Every Child
Our Local Improvement priorities are:
The Implementation and compliance with the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and statutory guidance
What will we do 2017-2020:
Continue to build a confident workforce to fully embed the GIRFEC approach into our daily activities
Train and develop our staff to maximise the skills and potential within our 'Teams Around the Child'
Develop our systems: Emis, SEEMIS and Carefirst to make them more efficient and relevant to changing practice and performance monitoring
Develop a more focused approach within our assessment and planning process
Build on multi-agency approaches and extend further into specialist, adult and third sector services
Respond to the changes in respect of the Information Sharing Bill and Data Protection Act
What are the plans and structures that will support us to succeed?
Health and Social Care Partnership Strategic Plan and Annual Performance Reports
Education Services Service Plan and Annual Performance Reports
CPP Inspection Improvement Action Plan
West Dunbartonshire Council Local Housing Strategy
Criminal Justice Partnership Plan
progress made
Ensuring a confident workforce
The principles of GIRFEC underpin our child centred approaches to partnership working. Mechanisms to support Health and Well Being and implement early intervention strategies are well developed across agencies. Data and information contained within the Strategic Needs Assessment for WDC has informed our plans and ensures responses pertinent to our local context. These will be the basis for ongoing planning and delivery alongside updated SG Children’s Services Planning Guidance.
As a result of well established partnerships, responses to the pandemic have been fast and efficient in supporting children and families . These enabled joint and targeted supports of our most vulnerable via support packages, Hub places and remote TATC planning.
Appropriate review and audit procedures are in place to ensure staff are working with the most up to date and evidence based best practice. Policies are regularly reviewed to take into account most current thinking. As a result of informed professional forums and appropriate training our workforce are fully aware of the standards and expectations of them as they support our children and young people in partnership with other agencies.
Professional Learning and multi-agency working ensuring GIRFEC is embedded in daily activities
Since 2017, a wide range of multi-agency partners have collaborated to develop their abilities to support children, young people and families via a range of professional learning opportunities and policy developments such as:
Seasons for Growth and Bereavement UK resources;
Guidance to respond to tragic incidents;
Speech, Language Therapy and Education staff have collaborated in providing advice, support and training to schools and Social Communication Parenting groups;
Rolling out training and assessment of the SCERTs framework for supporting children with ASD at home and in school;
Sollihul training;
ACES awareness and trauma informed practice sessions, including the establishment of an ACES Forum and Steering Group;
Multi-agency training and approaches to Team Around The Child Planning and working.
Primary Probationer training FINAL.docx
The authority Newly Qualified Teacher Programme includes CLPL focused on Inclusion and sessions supported by the HI, VI, ASD, Dyslexia inputs with signposting to current toolkits and linking to standards for full registration. As well as core CLPL on ACES and Equality and Diversity.
Our core programme of CLPL has been revised and is led by a range of Central Support Services staff and Children's Services partners on a regular basis for all leaders, teaching staff and learning assistants.
For the session 19/20 alone over 200 members of staff had attended a mixture of the above CLPL sessions.
Central Support Services have also created a range of Google Classrooms for each area to promote the sharing of resources and signposting.
Evaluations from all sessions indicate staff feel more able to support the range of needs of children and young people.
Suite of Professional Forums
We are committed to the development of professional learning and leadership and in Educational Services have developed a suite of professional forums supporting networking. The forums promote collaborative practices within and across establishments which are key to ensuring the highest quality of leadership. The forums not only allow for key information to be shared they provide a valuable time for discussion, collaboration and the sharing of best practice which ultimately ensures a confident workforce where the principles of GIRFEC are embedded in all establishments.
In 2019/2020 there were 14 forums with 161 participants attending. These have proved invaluable in the response to the pandemic as an established means of practitioners collaborating to share good practice and support interventions.
MAPA Training
We are committed to keeping West Dunbartonshire children and Young people in WDC and in ensuring staff have the skill-sets to do so. The Management of Actual or Potential Aggression (MAPA) training is one of the behaviour management training options introduced to support staff in coping with dis-regulated behaviours. With a focus on prevention, it also teaches staff de-escalation skills as well as non-restrictive and restrictive interventions. This provides staff with strategies and skills to safely respond to anxious, hostile or violent behaviour.
We currently have 8 Trainers within WDC. 11 sessions were delivered with 136 participants from across the authority.
Addressing poverty
According to the ‘End Child Poverty’1 group there are 4,887 children in West Dunbartonshire living in poverty. This represents 26.7% of the young population; a proportion that is substantially higher than the Scottish average of 20%.
Our multi-agency approach to addressing this starts with the SG addressing poverty framework and builds upon it to include actions that are intended to:
Maximise income from employment;
Reduce the cost of living;
Maximise income from benefits; and
Maximise access to opportunity from public sector investment.
Our aim is to build resilience within families in order to assist them to address the drivers of poverty and improve their quality of life, reducing the incidence of poverty in West Dunbartonshire as a result.
Local partners involved in developing the report are encouraged to give particular consideration to actions that will support identified priority groups.
'Improved Life Chances for all Children, Young People and Families’.
West Dunbartonshire: Local Child Poverty Action Report
COST OF SCHOOL DAY BOOKLET.PDFCost of the school day toolkit
This report lays out the key findings from the Educational services Child Poverty working group in West Dunbartonshire. Staff from all sectors have been involved in research and gathering information. 1637 parents from Early Years through to Secondary School responded to the survey. The resulting report highlights the cost barriers to learning and participation in school and early years. It reflects upon the work already being undertaken in our establishments to reduce or remove the costs as well as detailing recommendations for further action to address financial barriers. GIRFEC, the National Multi Agency Framework, underpins the assessment and planning process for supporting some of our most vulnerable pupils and families. For each of the wellbeing indicators, the report highlights our findings on the impact of poverty in relation to the cost of the school day and sets out our recommendations.
A programme of training has been devised and is rolling out across our Local Learning Communities alongside our focus on ACES, to ensure all school staff are aware of the impact of poverty on their school communities.
Emis, Seemis & CareFIRST
As developing a platform where all 3 systems can share information is not achievable at this time, we have worked to ensure there are clear and well embedded protocols for effective and improving joined up working, implemented a SEEMIS training programme to ensure consistent use across our establishments as well as an auditing system that aims to moderate the use of electronic recording and capture best practice. Consequently, establishment and multi agency teams not only collaborate on a regular basis to improve the outcomes for our children and young people but the systems that record the vital elements of demographic information, needs analysis and wider support have become more robust.
LPN AUDIT 2020 feedback Report.docxLatest Pastoral Notes (LPN) was launched with Early Years and Primary schools by year end 2016 and the use of seemis chronologies by all establishments by April 2017. This has maximised the skills and potential within our Teams Around the Child processes and is incorporated into Child Protection training, ASN Audit training and prompted in the sharing of IRD minutes/MARAC meetings/Support Plans.
LPN is used by all WDC establishments and a recent annual audit identified a number of good practice areas along with emerging themes for learning. Audit reports are shared with learning communities in order to improve consistency and good practice.
Latest Pastrol Notes can only be shared via Subject Access Request and are redacted as required in collaboration with the records management officer.
Data Protection Act
It is a mandatory requirement for employees of West Dunbartonshire to complete Data Protection / GDPR awareness training. West Dunbartonshire provide all employees with an employee guide for Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR.
The Employee Awareness guide has been produced to help employees understand what the implications of Data Protection/GDPR are to them as an employee of West Dunbartonshire Council. Employees must acknowledge receipt of the guide, confirm that they have read it and complete a short knowledge test. This ensures employee understanding of data protection law and how it may impact on their role and the lives of children and families they serve.