Our Consultancy Support services include

• Service reviews
• Diagnostic reviews of practice and processes
• Bespoke, responsive support services – for example workshops and action learning sets

We provide an external lens to quality assure the improvements you strive for, or to identify practice and process areas requiring attention.

Consultancy Support and Guidance for Local Authorities

INGSON provides constructive and balanced feedback to enable your staff and managers to learn and improve their services.

Many Local Authorities have already benefited from over 40 years of our combined experience as senior consultants in Children’s Services. 

Our services range from providing senior leaders with a level of independent external scrutiny around specific practice areas following service area reviews, through to the revision and simplification of electronic systems. We always work closely with practitioners and managers to evaluate practice and provide coaching in targeted areas to aid improvements.

We provide high quality reports to senior leaders which have often been helpful to Ofsted when they visit. Commonly we present our findings directly to your leadership team; this assists with the messages and ensures that managers and leaders can have their questions answered directly.

Would you benefit from?

• A clear and accurate diagnosis of operational, process, practice and management problems
• The identification of existing areas of good practice which can then be used to inform improvement
• Coherent, confident social care practice that is based on clear assessment and outcome focused planning
• The redesign and realignment of social care front door systems to ensure safe and efficient working based on clear assessment of risk
• Constructive feedback – we actively seek solutions and do not just identify problems
• An accurate judgement of management capacity in relation to improvement
• Evaluative capacity being built within the organisation to embed and sustain change

We work alongside your key staff and managers to enable ownership and ensure sustainability.

This outlines some of the services we can offer you. Our work with you will be tailored to your bespoke requirements. Get in touch today for a free initial consultation.

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A Brief Overview of how our Rapid Review Works

The qualitative part of the programme focuses on the basics of practice within teams, involving separate discussions with the team and the team manager to determine the current morale and sense of team cohesion and health.

The improvement programme is then underpinned by up-to-date quantitative performance data on a focused range of indicators.A summary of the quality issues in each team – and each worker – is produced for managers at each stage of the programme, along with a clear and specific guide as to how practice could be rapidly improved.

Senior consultants with many years of experience in Children’s Services, we work with social work values and ethics to ensure success for you, your team and the children and families you work with.

Improving the lives of real children and their families through our innovative
method of bringing improvements to social care practice.

Improving the Quality of Social Work and Management Practice

Achieving improvement within the complex organisational system of children’s social care is not a linear or simple process. This particularly applies when the reasons for poor or deficient performance are deep rooted or, usually inadvertently, actually built into the system.

Our Team Evaluation and Development Programme concentrates on enhancing the basic building blocks of good practice and on creating a strong focus on steady and sustainable progress. This is achieved through evaluation and improvement of the quality of social work and management practice through a team development approach. The programme is intended to be run four times within a six-month period to rapidly build improvement in the chosen areas.

Based on quality criteria used by Ofsted, we have further customised and developed the definitions of ‘what good looks like’ for this programme. We have also designed a range of simple and focused tools to capture the correct information.

Would you and your team benefit from?

• Complete clarity about expected standards, including continuous testing to discover whether those standards are being met.
  
• The use of a systemic approach that both recognises good practice and rapidly challenges poor practice.
  
• Use of transparency; being clear about how teams are performing against the agreed standards so that the whole Department can see progress (or the lack of it).
  
• The provision of continuous on-the-ground targeted support for those who are struggling to meet the standards.
  
• Recognition of those individuals and teams who are achieving agreed standards consistently; and using the learning from success to assist teams and individuals who are struggling to meet the agreed standards.
  
• Doing with and not unto.

If you are in need of a Rapid Review, call us today to see what we can do for you. We offer a free initial consultation.

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Our Management Development services include

• Tailored coaching programme
• Bespoke mentoring
• Learning shops

INGSON has been at the forefront of introducing management development centres into social care settings, both in the children’s and adult services field. Management capacity is assessed on both an individual and organisational level.

We work with managers at various levels providing coaching, mentoring, action learning set situations and learning shops. All these approaches are aimed at providing managers with the opportunities to learn, reflect on and develop their role as a manager.

Management Development for Local Authorities

With INGSON you should expect radical and innovative feedback. We will challenge culture and practice if it is not delivering excellent services.

Would your leadership team benefit from bespoke coaching or mentoring? Working with your management team through coaching, we can help individuals to identify their own management style and approach. Equipped with this understanding, managers can then be encouraged and motivated to make adjustments in order to help them perform better as leaders to bring improvements to targeted areas of practice.

We also offer workshops tailored to your specific requirements. As an example, for one Local Authority we focused on best practice standards with particular attention being given to the safeguarding and child in care areas of activity. Alongside this we delivered a mentoring programme for first line managers to ensure that change is embedded and sustained.

Uniquely INGSON provides management development events which will help your team to build and strengthen lasting management techniques. These events use a variety of exercises, typically including a problem-solving exercise, a presentation and a role play tackling a performance issue to assess management competence and develop skills.

Would your management team benefit from?

• An impartial evaluation of management capacity and practice
• Individual mentoring to strengthen and improve management practice
• Helpful and constructive challenge to aid the improvement process
• A programme of management development events

Having worked with many Local Authorities to help to develop their management teams, we know what works. We will work alongside your managers to empower and motivate them, and to bring positive changes that will ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Contact us today to discuss how we can help to develop and strengthen your team through our Management Development services. We are happy to offer a free initial consultation.

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