Foreword
The Children’s Services Workforce Development Strategy sets out our commitment to diversity and inclusion and how we will achieve; a stable, permanent workforce, an effective wellbeing offer and a comprehensive learning and development offer. We will do this focusing on meeting the needs of our communities to have a workforce that is reflective of the people we provide a service to.
The strategy highlights what we have done, where we are now, where we want to be and how we plan to get there to become a more diverse and inclusive service, with One Coventry values. Our commitment through our Corporate Workforce Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and Corporate People Plan and One Coventry Values are clear that a commitment to equality underpins the way that we work with partners to continue to deliver good protection, support or intervention to vulnerable families across Coventry, this is supported by strong political support to ensure children’s services is supported to deliver a sustainable workforce.
The service recognises that creating the right conditions for good practice to succeed and supporting Children’s Services colleagues to be the best they can have a positive impact for children. The wellbeing of staff has never been more critical, staff are supported with a wellbeing offer to help them to achieve a work-life balance.
The service has worked extensively to ensure that the recruitment and retention of Children and Family Social Workers is a key strategic and operational priority. The service continues to have a relentless focus on addressing vacant posts and attracting high-quality social workers to Coventry.
We are proud to have been rated as a ‘Good’ authority in our Ofsted Inspection in August 2022 and rated ‘Outstanding’ in our HMIP Youth Justice inspection in February 2023.
Coventry Family Valued focuses on the importance of supporting children to remain at the heart of their families and their communities; fundamental to this is restorative and relationship-based practice, developing a programme of change that supports practitioners to truly work with children, young people and the families we serve by empowering and enabling families to reach family led decisions. Our approach to Child Friendly Cov is about developing a whole city approach to supporting Coventry children and young people with the ambition to make Coventry the best city in the UK for children and young people to live and grow up.
The service continues to maintain and provide support, training and investment in the workforce which are fundamental to service innovation and improvement and help make Coventry a great place to work and live. Existing work and good practice are being taken forward by continuing to develop a culture of ongoing learning and development.
Practitioners across Children’s Services continue to be central to the achievement of these goals and ambitions for children, young people and their families in Coventry.
Councillor Pat Seaman
Lead Member for Children’s Services