Written this week by Carlton
Hello,
I’ve taken up the mantle of writing the blog this week as
Alison and Alistair are on holiday and Terence is at the children’s services
conference in Bournemouth.
Sadly (for me but maybe not her), Carolyn is about to enter
her last week at the council before she retires next Friday. We will be
celebrating Carolyn’s 11 years at Wiltshire as a corporate director next week
but I wanted to say how much I have enjoyed working with her. Not only has she
taught me so much, she has always been there for advice, perspective and a
passion for doing the right thing for Wiltshire, its residents and most
importantly its children and young people. Her leadership style is a great mix
of authenticity, humility, and dedication coupled to outstanding political
management skills and a deep technical knowledge. A very tough act to follow
and I will miss her a lot.
It’s been another really busy week, so my apologies for
covering some of the following key issues in such brevity…
We had a great update at our corporate leadership team
meeting on Monday about the children’s services integration (CSI) programme.
Although clearly children-focused, CSI is a programme which
cuts across a number of different areas of the organisation – including
finance, HR, digital, property/assets, and also the community.
The programme aims to improve the services we provide for children
and young people in Wiltshire; to keep them safe and help them achieve positive
outcomes. We are building on the considerable progress already made, seeking to
improve how we work internally, across services and with our partners.
Currently there are different processes or assessments undertaken and different
agencies or services involved – this means families experience multiple
assessments and workers. For example a child who has special educational needs,
mental health difficulties and poor school attendance will be assessed three
times and there may be one, two, or three plans as a result.
The programme aims to reduce that
sort of duplication and also reduce demand and spend, provide earlier
intervention, deliver community based services and, most importantly, improve
outcomes for children and families in Wiltshire. It’s a great piece of work
which seeks to improve the overall experience and deliver a service fit for
purpose that families and children say has helped them to become more resilient
and is future-proof.
Cabinet met on Tuesday and discussed some big issues
including our housing site allocations policy, our core strategy and some of
the brilliant work being done to integrate military and civilian communities. This
discussion took place the morning after our team had been presented with the MOD's Employer Recognition Scheme Gold
Award in London from Prince Harry and Defence
Secretary Sir Michael Fallon. This
is the highest badge of honour for organisations that have signed the Armed
Forces Covenant and demonstrated outstanding support for those who serve and
have served.
The Devizes Community Hub and Library was officially opened on Tuesday by John Thomson. It was a very busy afternoon with lots of activities for children and performances by local choirs and others. The building looks incredible and is already being well-used by the community, who can now access customer services, registrations and library services all under one roof.
You’ll have no doubt seen the national news this week that BAE Systems is to cut nearly 2,000 jobs – it goes without saying that this is a huge blow to the manufacturing sector and we will wait to see the impact on Wiltshire but discussions around the Boscombe site are ongoing.
Finally, many thanks to those of you who provided feedback
on the proposed tier two management structure. We considered each and every one
of the comments we received and the final structure has now been finalised and
will be implemented in early November. You can find out more and see the
updated structure chart here
– please do take a look.
And finally alongside Jane Scott I was delighted to present
ILM Level 5 certificates in coaching and mentoring to Judith Vanderpump and
Theo Biney at the regular coaching network session in County Hall.
Congratulations to both on a really well deserved achievement.
Have a great weekend,
Carlton
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