Our commitment to you

We believe that when you come to work within Childrens Services in Trafford, we have a responsibility to you to provide the right tools to undertake the role you are appointed to.

Induction

We have recently introduced an updated induction programme that is for all new colleagues joining us at all levels.

There will be protected time within those first few weeks for you to access the areas that we have identified as being helpful but you will also have an opportunity to add to that as you join us and get to know more about the service areas.

Workload

We are committed to ensuring that your workload is manageable. This isn’t necessarily a specific caseload number as we all know that in our practice numbers don’t always reflect the complexity of the children and families you are working with. Manageable workloads are therefore critical for managers to support you with and to confirm priorities through discussion and supervision. We do have performance management reporting of caseloads and therefore at all levels we are responsible for monitoring this across the service.

There will be times where there is a level of flexibility required to meet the needs of the service or for individual children you work with, particularly in times of crisis. We will ensure that you are able to take additional hours back quickly so that you have the balance within your work and home life.

Supervision

One of our practice led improvements has been to refresh our supervision framework which has been a really exciting piece of work. We commit to offering monthly formal supervision that is both reflective and supportive but that also provides clear advice/guidance/direction to you. We will also be implementing monthly peer supervision as part of our refreshed framework which practitioners will have a role in deciding the topic of discussion.

Development and opportunities

We have invested in a minimum 3 year programme with relational partners, ‘Strengthening Practice’. They will deliver a programme of ‘core skills’ to the workforce but they will also work at all levels in building relationships and help us to unblock any culture barriers to improvement and learning.

In addition to this we have a workforce development programme along with a corporate development programme that supports learning and development at all levels.

We are planning our first Practice Week for October 2021 which will give practitioners and managers the opportunity to attend sessions to learn about a wide range of service delivery to children and families.