Annual Report of the Adults Principal Social Worker

Annual Report of the Adults Principal Social Worker 2024-2025

The work of the Adults Principal Social Worker (PSW) Andrew Errington for Coventry City Council during 2024/25.

What is a PSW?

Care Act 2014 states a PSW should;

  • be visible across the organisation
  • support and develop effective conditions for practice
  • oversee quality and improvement of practice
  • have direct contact with the Adults Director and front-line practice

The PSW for Adults, Andrew Errington commenced in post in July 2016 and is the Head of Safeguarding and Practice Development.

Workforce Development

  • Updated the Learning and Development portfolio for Adult Services in ensuring access to a range of relevant and current virtual and in person training opportunities
    • 89 training events relevant to Social Work attended by 1113 staff
    • 3 dedicated CPD events and refresher training for deafblind assessors
  • Training events held with a focus on legal literacy and ensuring assessment and support is inclusive and engages with sexuality, gender identity and religion, belief and spirituality
  • Hosted a 7th ‘virtual’ annual practice week with the Children’s PSW providing access to a week of practice focused events
    • 665 staff attended the 7 events during the week
  • Further Adult Services Wellbeing week in May 2024 with staff attending various online and in person activities and events focusing on health and wellbeing. Next event planned for June 2025

Social Work Education

  • Embedding links with our local Higher Education Institutions Coventry and Warwick Universities and supporting the West Midlands Social Work Teaching Partnership.
  • Practitioners supporting teaching on the Adults Module at Coventry University.
  • Continuing to support new routes into Social Work, including the new Degree Level Social Work apprenticeships.
    • Third cohort of 2 apprentices qualify and first cohort graduate at Warwick University, 5 members of staff undertaking the Degree Level SW apprenticeship, 2 further places planned for 2025.

Meeting Standards

  • Supporting the Post Qualifying Standards for SW Practice Supervisors, commissioning supervision training and purchased reflective, theory and self-cards practice for every supervisor to use
  • Prepared practitioners for the 5th renewal with their Social Work Regulator ‘Social Work England’
  • Launched a new ‘Learning Hub’ for front line staff
  • Preparing for CQC Assurance Frameworks

Strength Based Approaches

  • Continuing to support Strength-based Practice Framework with Motivational Interviewing training and co-produced with practitioners a direct work resource with a range of tools to support communication and engagement: https://www.coventry.gov.uk/directworktoolkit
  • Continued to chair Complex Case and Risk Enablement Panel discussions
  • Leading on establishing the demographic profile of people accessing Adult Social Care, exploring experiences of different communities

Practice Development Roles

  • SW Practice Development roles are supporting newly qualified Social Workers, promoting Practice Education and providing practice support to front line staff and managers
    • Supporting 12 new NQSWs (as of end of March 2025)
    • 3 primary placements for SW’s
    • 3 new SW Practice Educator trained

Practice Quality

  • Practice Quality Assurance Framework with new simplified audit system. Includes observation of practice, practice and supervision audits. Allows organisational view on practice themes.
    • 330 audits undertaken in 24/25 (as of end of March 2025)
  • Embedding the senior managers quality assurance activity, receiving and feeding back on examples of case work and undertaking customer interviews.
  • Developed a Practice Development, Learning and Improvement Framework systematic way of identifying organisational wide learning, areas of improvement and sharing best practice across the organization and making use of ‘Practice Learning Alerts’.
  • Commenced a quarterly Quality and Experience Review meeting, receiving and reviewing findings from the range of activities providing any feedback and insights into the quality of support and experiences of those accessing Adult Social Care.
  • Continue to update a ‘We asked, You said, We did’ process to ensure any improvements identified by quality assurance and experience approaches are subject to feedback https://www.coventry.gov.uk/health-social-care-say-getting-involved/said

Professional Curiosity

  • Ensuring practice informed by evidence and curiosity, raising the profile of our subscription to ‘Community Care Inform’, ‘Care Knowledge’, and ‘SW Connect’ helping staff to stay up to date on the latest expert information and legislation to help day to day practice.
    • 354 staff are now using Community Care Inform
    • 112 staff are now using Care Knowledge
    • 87 staff now accessing SW Connect
  • 9 in 10 respondents in health check survey agree with the statement ‘I have access to best practice, research and evidence materials’.
  • Commenced use of ‘Research Circles’ brings together practitioners and academics to attend a reflective session to read and review a piece of research.

Policy and Best Practice Guidance

Practice Leadership

  • Elected Co-chair of the West Midlands Adults Principal Social Worker Network until 2025 (chairing network since January 2017).
  • PSW research associate supporting the development of a research culture in the region https://www.wm-adass.org.uk/improvement/developing-a-research-culture/
  • Undertaking regional virtual ‘safe and effective practice reviews’ in support of CQC assurance preparations.
  • Member of S75 Board and ICB leadership governance boards.

Safeguarding Adults

Engaging and Coproducing

Celebrating and Connecting with Practice

  • Virtual networks and forums in place for staff engagement continued.
  • Supporting Adult Social Care Celebration event.
  • Keeping in touch with staff via the Adult Services E Bulletin and ‘Let’s Talk’ sessions

Priorities for 2025-26

  • To continue to develop strength-based tools and techniques in practice, their translation into conversion and recording, with a focus on inclusive practice
  • To continue to focus on practice quality and to engage in different ways with the experience of people accessing Adult Social Care
  • Embed the Practice Development, Learning and Improvement Framework

Download a print version of this report

View a print version