Taking a moment to recognise some great work

It was great to recognise the hard work of staff at Tuesday’s Achieving Excellence awards. These awards, and initiatives like the recently launched EPIC impressions, are all about giving people a platform to say thanks to their colleagues for their work. It’s a simple gesture, but has a positive impact on morale and makes people feel really valued in their role. As always, those who were nominated and won an award on Tuesday are a credit to the council, and you can find out more in this week’s Electric Wire. 

 If you’ve haven’t seen the message sent round earlier in the week about the proposed tier two management structure please do read it. These proposals are being put forward as we feel they will give us the best opportunity to successfully deliver our ambitious business plan. We really want to hear from you though, so if you think what we’re proposing isn’t quite right or there’s another way of doing things, please let us know. Even if you’re not a manager these proposals will change the way we do things, so please take a look. If you wish to comment on what’s being put forward please email orgdesign@wiltshire.gov.uk with your views. The deadline for staff and members to provide feedback is midday on Tuesday 10 October 2017.

 These plans, and much more, will be discussed in more detail at the upcoming staff engagement forums so please make sure you book onto a session. It will be our first chance to speak to you since our new team was formed and we’re looking forward to it.

One of the top priorities in the previously mentioned business plan is to protect the vulnerable and this week we launched a new approach to how we work with families and children – the Support and Safeguarding Service.  We think this new way of working, which involves creating new posts to provide consistency to the service we provide families, will help improve workflow and reduce bureaucracy. This has been brought in following extensive planning and feedback from families, partners, staff and other authorities. We’ll be further developing this service as we go forward but we firmly believe it will go a long way to help us provide high quality support and care.

The Wiltshire Parent Carer Council conference took place in Devizes and discussed the important issue of transition from children into adulthood for children with special educational issues. This was very well attended and supported.

We were pleased to have the council participate in the local authority South West Challenge 2017. This provides a great opportunity for aspiring managers to test themselves and step a little out of their comfort zone and see what it’s like to be a senior manager. It’s great for development but good fun too and it involves working with partners across other authorities – which is always useful and eye opening. Hopefully those who took part haven’t been put off management!

 Finally, a short video has been put together to encourage people to respond to the election canvass. Have you responded yet? Take a look to see why it's important that you do.

Alison, Alistair, Carlton, Carolyn and Terence