Our training is designed to help your staff develop the skills they need to protect vulnerable children. We can develop best practice skills, knowledge and behaviours in accordance with legislative frameworks such as the Care Act 2014.

Strengthening practice

This course equips delegates with the tools needed for good supervision practice.

Audience: anyone in a supervisory role, including service managers, team managers, senior practitioners and senior coordinators
Duration: 2 days
Type: face-to-face (classroom)
Cost: £300
Linked courses: Strengthening assessment
Objectives:

• explore supervision models and form an individual approach
• build a profile of an excellent supervisor and the skills they employ
• undertake an assets and gaps exercise
• explore the learning styles of employees and how they impact on the supervision process
• apply Kolb’s learning cycle and look at how to assist employees who are struggling

Permanence planning

This course highlights the role that permanence plays in children’s lives and helps learners create permanence plans that improve outcomes for their region’s children and young people.

Audience: social workers who work with children
Duration: 1 day
Type: face-to-face (classroom)
Cost: £300
Linked courses: Working with hostile and evasive families
Objectives:

• increase understanding of the concept of permanence in the context of care planning
• learn the legal framework, statutory guidelines and legislation for permanence planning
• learn the range of permanence options for children
• explore methods of engaging children and their families in the planning process
• create plans for children and young people based on individual needs
• support the use of child centred practice and focus continuously on the child’s journey throughout placement to permanence

Working with hostile and evasive families

Develop awareness of the strategies employed by hostile and evasive parents and carers and identify strategies to protect children and young people while maintaining professional roles and boundaries.

Audience: all practitioners working directly with vulnerable children and their families
Duration: 1 day
Type: face-to-face (classroom)
Cost: £300
Linked courses: Permanence planning
Objectives:

• identify, understand and recognise a range of avoidant, resistant and hostile behaviours
• learn the differences between compliance and active engagement
• understand factors that may contribute to hostile behaviour, including the anxiety that families may feel about engaging with professionals
• develop strategies to manage the personal impact of hostile responses from families, whilst maintaining professional roles and boundaries
• understand how professionals from different agencies can work with families and how the challenge can impact on relationships between workers

Achieving best evidence (ABE)

Achieving best evidence is the national protocol for interviewing children as part of a criminal investigation. This training course equips practitioners with the necessary skills to improve the standard of interviewing child victims and witnesses in legal proceedings, and improve the standard of visually recorded interviews.

Audience: qualified social workers who may be required to interview children as part of a criminal investigation
Duration: 5 days
Type: face-to-face (classroom)
Cost: £1,500
Linked courses: none
Objectives:

• develop skills in working with other agencies to investigate allegations of child abuse and to explore issues which impact on this process
• understand the complementing roles and responsibilities of social workers and police officers working together to achieve best evidence
• develop skills in information gathering for interviews and Section 47 investigations
• develop skills in planning and conducting interviews of children and young people and improve the standard of interviewing child victims and witnesses in legal proceedings

Attachment theory

Understand attachment theory and apply to the practice of assessment, planning and care of children and young people.

Audience: all practitioners working with children and young people in Northamptonshire
Duration: 5 days
Type: face-to-face (classroom)
Cost: £300
Linked courses: Neglect | Domestic abuse | Child sexual exploitation
Objectives:

• describe attachment theory and understand how attachment develops
• explore how experiences in early relationships can create internal working models and attachment styles that may affect future relationships
• understand the impact of separation, loss, abuse and neglect on children’s development and their capacity to form attachments
• make links between theory, research and practice