Workforce Development Strategy

1. Workforce Development Strategy London Borough of Camden Children's Schools and Families Directorate

2. Background Each local authority is required to produce a Children’s Workforce Strategy as part of their Children and Young People Plan. The government acknowledges that sustainable and meaningful change needs to be driven by local solutions to local needs and circumstances. Camden’s Children's Workforce Strategy sets out how our vision of an integrated, highly skilled and flexible Children’s workforce across all sectors is being implemented and how any gaps are to be realised.

3. Camden’s approach Our Children’s workforce strategy has been in development for over a year, involving the partner agencies in Camden who work with children and young people. It builds on our previous experience of workforce reform, and has involved representatives from Human Resources, and professional staff from the Health sector, the Voluntary sector and from Camden Council. A multi agency steering group, chaired by the Assistant Director for Partnerships, Strategy and Commissioning, has met frequently over the course of the past year to formulate our strategy.

4. Key tasks in scoping were:- • 1) Collecting data on current baselines of children’s activities. Analysing future demands identified as priorities within the local CYYP and national service reforms. • 2) Assessing current workforce capacity. • Undertook a sector workforce audit/analysis which identified: • staff numbers, • skills and professional competences, • age profiles and diversity, • management structures, • multi-agency practices, • current workforce remodelling activities, • training and learning activities, • local and national labour market data, • recruitment and retention levers, • resource maps, succession plans and neighbouring borough activities and competition bench marks.

5. Drafting the strategy • - Establishing agreed terms of reference for work streams and the groups that were to analyse the workforce data. • - Reviewing strategic and service workforce plans and developments. • - Scoped models for creating greater workforce integration. • - Integrating development of national priorities. • - Consultation. Views from staff and user feed-back acquired to establish commitment, effective working models, priorities, timescales, and how to minimise disruption. • - Resource assessments conducted. • - Evaluation and review processes established. • 4) Action planning for implementation

6. Fundamentals for success • Conduct astute workforce analysis early on in the process: • A greater understanding of the paid and voluntary workforce in Camden has helped us to create development paths to enable a better equipped workforce to meet the needs of the community. • 2. Engage effectively with all sectors from outset: • Private and Voluntary sector ownership of strategy is crucial for implementation • 3. Plan for effective consultation: • important to ensure staff at all levels are involved. Develop a communications plan.

7. Fundamentals cont. 4. Provide regular updates to senior management: encourages buy in and ownership. 5. Ascertain priorities for integrated working and key outcomes: Add value to existing strategies rather than replicate organisational/departmental workforce strategies. 6. Build in monitoring and review functions: The action plans within the strategy ensure that change is managed through matching training and development to the priorities in our Children’s and Young People Plan but this process needs careful management with resources attached. 7. Establish sub groups to take forward specific actions: Be aware that membership of the steering group will need to be fluid. Important that those involved are the right people at that time

8. Measuring success in the short term • Having relevant workforce information which all agencies can access • Reduction of recruitment and retention hotspots • Improved networking to increase the opportunity of access and knowledge of local jobs for Camden residents. • Aligning training activities delivered to third sector partners in-line with Sector Skills Council Agreements • Delivering on national learning and development targets • Gathering staff, volunteers and service user satisfaction surveys on skills and competences and using these to inform recruitment and retention activity

9. Risks For years 1-3 it was considered that the main risks were: 1. A failure to achieve universal understanding about children’s services workforce and the creation of a shared identity. 2. Failing to gather requisite data on the children’s workforce which will be required for review and evaluation. 3. A failure in creating communication and co-operation between roles and sectors, resulting in a strategy which not everyone is committed to. 4. A failure to achieve improved outcomes as a result of ineffective links between the children and young peoples plan and its implementation. 5. A failure to make the necessary links to other Borough and National activities.

10. Next? It will be the responsibility of the Camden Children’s Workforce Strategy Group to annually assess and evaluate the changes and to highlight where extra work needs to be prioritised to meet or modify targets for sector workforce development improvements. The reports recommendations will feed into the Children and Young People’s Partnership Board, Children and Young People’s Plan and annual action plans for the Workforce Strategy. Service users will be given various mechanisms to give views on the new workforce and help to ensure improvement.