SKEF – Contemporary and innovative practice models in adult social care

The North London Social Work Teaching Partnership is dedicated to sharing best practice and knowledge about innovations and improvement programmes across Partner organisations.
The SKEFs provide a unique opportunity to share practice experience and specialist skills, network and enhance collaborative dialogue between managers and practitioners that will inform practise and service development.

These sessions are suitable for social workers, managers and anyone involved in supporting the learning of others, practice or service development.

Venue

Tomlinson Centre, Queensbridge Rd., London E8 3ND

AGENDA

SESSION DETAILS AND FACILITATOR PROFILES

Health and Social Care working together

Simon Cole, Head of Integrated Discharge Service

Summary of session: A reflection on the growth of the relationship between a social work team and the hospitals it serves, exploring a journey towards integration. This session will explore some of the challenges and successes and how to make the best use of time, talent and money to increase the positive impact of an integrated service in the lives of the people it serves.

Biography: Having grown up in a family with four adopted siblings and numerous long and short term foster children, a future in social care was perhaps inevitable! A social worker by background, for most of his career, Simon has worked in the sometimes choppy waters between health and social care. For many years, Simon was Principal Manager for Placements with the London Borough of Kingston upon Thames co-located with the Primary Care Trust (PCT) managing access to care home placements and packages of care for all adult service user groups. He spent three years as the Social Care Lead for pandemic flu at the Department of Health and Social Care (remember Swine flu!) before becoming Assistant Director of Transformation at a large acute hospital, and then spent five years as Continuing Healthcare Lead for City and Hackney Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). For the last two years, Simon has led the Integrated Discharge Service in Hackney, a joint appointment between London Borough of Hackney and the Homerton University NHS Foundation Trust.

What is integration and why does it matter?

Andrew Reece, Head of Integrated Learning Disability Service

Summary of session: Andrew will lead an interactive session that will introduce some of the evidence about integration, including the variety of levels, what works and what it might mean from the differing perspectives of people who use services, front line professionals, local system leaders and Whitehall. While he doesn’t have all the answers, you will leave this session with a better understanding of the complex debate that continues to surround integration in its many and varied forms.

Biography: Since qualifying as a social worker in 1996, Andrew has worked in London and the Midlands in adult disability or all age disability teams. While working for Coventry, Andrew was Lead Manager for Transition and led Coventry’s Individual Budget Pilot. Andrew was Interim Head of Staffordshire’s All Age Disability Service, supporting the development of a key worker led model of care and support across social care and education, and also spent time supporting the development of Wolverhampton’s All Age Disability Service. Andrew is currently Head of an Integrated NHS/Local Authority Learning Disability Service in Camden where he leads one of the Named Social Worker Pilots, the learning from which Camden Learning Disability Service (CLDS) are now putting into practice through the development of a named worker model of health and social care.

Works for everyone? Family Group Conferencing with Adults, beyond the domain of child protection

Tim Fisher, Service Manager – FGC and Restorative Practice

Summary of session: Using family group conferencing (FCG) with vulnerable adults has been viewed for a long time as an idea with real potential. Why? Evidence from children’s FGCs, innovative practice in the Netherlands and policy developments in Adult Social Care & Mental Health all are sources for the optimism about the model birthed from Maori principles.

Biography: Tim has been involved in family group conferencing for more than 12 years as an advocate, coordinator and manager of FGC projects in Cardiff, Essex and Camden. Tim is a former chair of the All Wales FGC Network and a current member of the national accreditation of FGC projects development group. A qualified social worker with an MA in research on the use of direct payments for adults and time spent at the NSPCC developing in-depth assessments of children returning home from care. He has worked with Research in Practice and the Early Intervention Foundation on measuring the impact of FGCs for different people in the community. More than 300 family group conferences a year are held in community venues across Camden and our motto is that “FGC can work for everyone”, from the parent and new-born child seeking early help to the adult who wants to plan for a good end of life.

Published articles:

https://www.ripfa.org.uk/blog/family-group-conference-in-social-work/

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2016/09/22/werent-service-users-social-workers-just-people/

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2017/03/21/social-work-practice-uniting-social-workers-across-world/

*This event is only open to social workers and practitioners working in social care within our Partner organisations, comprising of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey and Islington councils, the charity Norwood and Middlesex University.

**Due to the limited spaces available, if this event is oversubscribed, registration will close seven days ahead of the event and places will be equally shared between Partner organisations. We ask that participants who sign up for this event save the date in their diary; however, a final confirmation email will be sent to participants seven days before the event.