South West Regional Update - 25th March 2010

National Workforce Update March 2010

Please download the latest children's workforce policy update from DCSF:

Children’s Workforce Policy Update 4^th March 2010

Current Information on ES Funding Post 2011
DCSF have provided an official response to any queries from LAs or schools about ES funding – download Extended Services Funding from April 2011 Onwards. This text was written in February, and since then there was the publication of the DCSF document outlining how £500m of savings would be achieved.  There is also a summary of the implications of the savings for ES funding:  ES and Schools Funding. 

South and West Association of Leaders in Special Schools Conference
Extending the Curriculum

The SWALSS Deputies' / Assistant Head Teachers Conference was held on the 8th and 9th March 2010.
The following documents - SWALSS – Background Information, and Stakeholder Engagement Actions

are now on the Special Schools section of our website.

Mind The Gap Sharing Day

Mind the Gap was a creative sharing day on the 23rd March which focused on creating coherence and collaborative advantage. Bringing together PSA’s, ESRA’s, the Voluntary sector and Personal Tutors across the region. The day actively shared success stories with particular focus on elements such as attainment, happiness, attendance, parenting and impact. One highlight was the appearance of Columnist and poet, Matt Harvey, who read a selection of his poems related to the day’s activities. To view resources from this event please visit the new Mind The Gap section on our website.

Children England News Bulletin

Children England’s news bulletin is produced weekly and is designed to keep you up-to-date with the latest developments in children and family policy. To see the kind of information available download the latest bulletin or contact Sophie Griffiths, Policy and Information Officer, Children England

CWDC promotes the campaign "All together, a better way of working" 

CWDC's integrated working campaign aims to ensure that everyone who works with children and young people – whatever their role – has the skills and knowledge to do the best job they possibly can.  The integrated working campaign has been shaped by our communications steering group and includes:

·         Campaign microsite which can be viewed at www.cwdcouncil.org.uk/alltogetherbetter

·         Targeted emails to drive traffic to our campaign microsite eg. the integrated working tools email sent to third and public sector lists and sports coaches.

·         Online adverts to drive traffic to our campaign microsite eg.  banners on C&YP Now, Third Sector and Community Care websites.

·         Public relations including local and regional media and opinion pieces in trade press.

·         Events toolkit, providing resources for people to do presentations about integrated working on our behalf eg. pop-up banner, PowerPoint template and postcard

·         Ambassador programme working with people who have experience of our integrated working tools to be the authentic voice of the campaign

·         Partner programme, working with organisations to extend our reach by disseminating our campaign messages to their members through their communications channels.

The partners who have already agreed to promote the campaign are: Children England, NAVCA, Kindle Partnership, National Children’s Bureau, Faith Based Regeneration Network, Archbishops Council, UK, School Development Support Agency and Family Matters Institute.

If you know of any other organisations that would also be able to support the campaign or you would like to feedback on the campaign then please contact Claire Dempster CWDC Communications Officer. Tel: 0113 290 4161 

 Please also see the following two press releases:

People in the South West call for all children’s workers to integrate better.

CWDC call on volunteers and professionals to work together for children

Coherence Group Survey

The Coherence Group would like to say many thanks for all your contributions to the recent survey on the current levels of coherence across the TDA, CWDC and National College.  The responses have been very useful in providing some much needed visibility of progress and activity at a national level.  These findings, along with the outcomes from the two current coherence pilots, will feed into an overall update report that we are working on in April and that, once agreed, will be widely shared across the agencies.

Support for Practitioners Working with Parents

Parent Channel TV- www.parentchannel.tv has a selection of mini-videos that can be watched by parents or by practitioners working with parents, on all sorts of subjects (including schools), with signposting to relevant national organisations and sites. You can browse by age group or by subject, and you are encouraged to embed your own choice from among the videos into your own website. It's funded by the DCSF, and completely free. There are over 70 videos on the site now, with more in the pipeline, and the response so far from practitioners and from parents' groups has been very positive. Do have a look at the site and signpost / embed / use the videos as you wish. There is also a travelling exhibition of Parenting Education Materials that can be hired for a week for parent-related events, it includes books, videos/DVDs, some parenting programmes, and other resources; for further details see www.parentinguk.org/pem where you can search or browse the database of contents of the exhibition. For further information please contact Alison Hill, Programmes Information Manager

The Developing Strategic & Sustainable Leadership

This event delivered by the Devon Learning and Development Partnership - www.devonldp.org was an informative and inspirational day. Please see resources on our website; Developing Strategic & Sustainable Leadership  and Developing Leadership Talent – a strategic approach – Professor Brent Davies

Update on Social Care from CWDC

The ebulletin will be of interest to you if you work in residential child care, foster care or the wider social care workforce.  CWDC's support for implementation of the foster care standards has expanded to include some really inspiring case studies and there’s some important news around using the standards with particular types of carer.  The Increasing Skills fund has now funded 5,470 social care workers to undertake NVQs and over 9,000 foster carers have now been registered for Training, Support & Development (TSD) funding. 

Find out more about CWDC's social care work and important news about both funding systems visiting:
CWDC Social Care ebulletin