Planning for Brighter Futures

All workshops will include the following topic areas at different levels:

• Planning for children in need
• Planning for children in need of protection
• Planning for children who are looked after
• Planning for restoration/reconciliation and permanency
• Planning for care leavers
• Building children’s resilience
• Repairing the impact of abuse and neglect on children

This level is intended for newly qualified practitioners and will cover the legislative basis for planning as well as current best practice. It will focus throughout on how to develop plans in partnership with children and their families and other agencies. It will look at using SMART objectives to plans and ways to measure outcomes so that children and families can see their progress. It will concentrate on ages and stages of development and planning for the short, medium and long term including looking at planning for restoration.
It will include using ICS as a day to day planning tool and look at current recording formats and how to use them effectively. The course requires active participation and is based on a series of case studies and using ICS to plan for children.

This level is for the emerging practitioner who is planning confidentially, and wants to improve their evidence based recording of plans and outcomes, particularly for court and conferences. It will focus on partnership working and multi-agency contribution to planning and look at strategies for measuring the most significant change for children as a result of intervention , including ensuring the wishes and feeling of the child are captured in planning. This workshop will be interactive and will require practitioners to share their practice within the group.

This level is for confident evidence based practitioners/front line managers who want to concentrate on latest research findings about supporting practitioners to plan effectively. It will concentrate on the latest improvements to ICS and the forms currently being used to record plans and share examples from other authorities. It will look at audit tools and strategies to improve planning. The workshop will involve understanding and identifying barriers to this type of practice and developing an action plan to support change to working practices where they have been identified.
It will put the emphasis on supporting staff to record evidence of analysis and professional judgement and creating a sense of the child for the reader. This workshop will involve participants leading part of the session as a case clinic and all participants must come prepared to contribute at a high level.