Embedding practice and learning in social work teams 

North East Lincolnshire Council is taking an active approach to ensuring social workers and partner agencies are working collaboratively to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people across its district.

Through the North East Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (NELSCP),

the council partners with Humberside Police, and NHS North East Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group to ensure information is being shared effectively to better support children and families.

This multi-agency approach is not new but with the change in leadership in children’s services at the council more than a year ago, greater emphasis has been placed on learning and information sharing, says Hayley, a social worker in child protection.

“Since the new leadership team came in at North East Lincolnshire, we have seen a real focus on upskilling the workforce,” she said. “They are keen to make sure that we understand local need and that we can respond to it – and to do that, we need to have the most up-to-date training.”

“The messages that are being given to social workers are also being given to police and health – with the aim of ensuring that we're all working together better to safeguard children, which ultimately is what we're all striving for.”

The NELSCP is part of wider council commitments, laid out by government in its ‘Working Together To Safeguard Children 2023’ , to promote multi-agency working.

“When we’ve got agencies around the table, discussing a child with the family, everybody is being promoted to understand that way of working,” said Wendy Fegan, an independent reviewing officer (IRO) at North East Lincolnshire Council.

“There’s a lot of focus on everybody’s greater understanding around work that is required to achieve good outcomes for children and their families and also enhance partnership work in relational practice and increase professional knowledge and skills.”

Working in partnership

The NELSCP structure includes a safeguarding children partnership board as well as various groups with oversight on learning and development, child exploitation, early help and a group that looks at key safeguarding themes such as neglect and child sexual abuse.

Having multiple agencies involved in a child’s journey within the care system offers benefits to the children, the families but also for practitioners, Wendy said.

“It promotes their voice and their views [the children and families], it promotes relationships, shared thinking, and builds trust with children and families,” she said.

North East Lincolnshire uses the systemic approach as its practice model and towards the end of 2024 introduced a facet to this approached known as  Risk Analysis Framework.

According to Wendy, this framework helps practitioners to assess, manage and analyse risk.

“Threshold documents are being updated to help people understand the [risk] thresholds from early help right through to children in our care, also child protection to when you step down to a child in need plan. So, there is a continuum,” she said.

“The feedback from parents is that it’s easier to understand the risks, the protective factors and what needs to change. Parents are able to contribute to discussions about their own plans and come up jointly with plans to move things forward. And you also have a third-person perspective [from the agency partners] – rather like a live audit,” Wendy said.

Putting learning into practice

Hayley has also seen, first hand, the value of being part of these audits.

She was part of an independent scrutiny panel that sits within NELSCP that looks at specific thematic areas such as neglect, child sexual abuse, child exploitation and domestic abuse. Being part of the scrutiny panel gave her an opportunity for to present one of her cases [with a child and their family] to the panel alongside her colleagues.

“The case I was presenting was very complex and was on the verge of entering court proceedings,” Hayley said. “There was a lot of chaos going on with that family that we were trying to solve to move them forward and stop them from entering into proceedings.”

“I was a little bit nervous initially. I think anybody would be, but I remember coming back and speaking to my service lead and saying: ‘I just found that so insightful’,” said Hayley.

Hayley explained that prior to attending the scrutiny panel, various professionals had raised concerns about the child she was supporting linked to negative influences from friends and anti-social behaviour.

But through the scrutiny panel, Hayley was able to sift through those concerns to prioritise what impact they had on the child, their health, education.

“That gave me a clear direction as to the areas that we needed to focus on,” she said. “So rather than having to deal with multiple issues, we could focus on the issues that were having the most detrimental impact on the child.”

“It was just really good to explain the case to people who were independent - who were not necessarily living and breathing it - and for them to be able to unpick things and ask the right questions.

“They came in and they’ve given me ideas and a focus that means I could go back and look at any gaps that there might have been.”

Boosting confidence

The experience also helped to boost Hayley’s self-confidence.

“I came away from that thinking: did I do that?” said Hayley. “I think one of NE Lincolnshire’s current tag lines is: ‘permission to be proud’ and it really highlighted to me that I was capable of going into a panel of strangers and sharing my knowledge. It gave me a massive sense of pride and it made me want to go on and continue to fight for this family and make a change.”

Wendy agrees. “It helps you to know your strengths and weaknesses to take forward and I think it is always good to have a joint learning, peer learning."

Social workers are trained to prepare for these types of panels through mentoring and peer support and practitioners are kept up to date on developments through the NELSCP through a regular newsletter mailout.

“Since the new leaders have come in it means more visibility. There is more training, there is more opportunities to contribute to assurance work in terms of helping with continued improved practice,” said Wendy.

Choosing a career at North East Lincolnshire

If you want to know more about a career at North East Lincolnshire, visit the council’s jobs and careers page, which will show you the roles currently available. And read articles from North East Lincolnshire here.

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