Mentoring Project
Our mentoring project aims to support and develop frontline social workers and managers in the delivery of safe, effective services to children and families, and by doing so helps to enhance the overall performance of the local authority. This scheme allows the local authority to benefit from highly experienced social work staff without the need to recruit or employ them on a long-term basis.
The Mentors
Our Mentors are all highly skilled childcare social workers with proven track records in children’s services. Typically they have been qualified for 20 years plus. Most will have had experience in management. Mentors work alongside a group of pre-selected social work staff advising, guiding, role modelling and teaching. Space is created for practice reflection and where appropriate, group learning sessions, based around 6 core modules. Mentoring programmes will typically run for 26 weeks, however, they can continue for longer if required, as mentors can transfer across different teams and services depending on need.
'I wanted to say thank you to Craig (from WillisPalmer) who provided consultancy to the Children with Disabilities team to help with core assessments last year. He helped the social worker with a core assessment which identified the extent of the needs of my autistic son. I wanted to let him know that my son has been at a residential school specialising in autism since last September and his and our lives have improved dramatically'.
Parent
Authoritative Social Work Practice
The phrase ‘authoritative social work’ has grown in prominence since the publication of the Munro Review in May 2011, having been previously referred to in the Baby Peter Executive Summary and subsequent biennial review into serious case reviews. The use of authoritative approaches has also been developed for supervisors as a way of helping managers remain ‘committed, structured and focussed, empathic, containing and knowledgeable’.
Our mentoring programme sets out to develop social workers and their managers to become more authoritative practitioners in the delivery of child protection and child care services.
Contact us here to enquire about commissioning our successful mentoring project…
“The WillisPalmer mentoring service has had a significantly positive impact in terms of up-skilling our frontline social workers. We have seen tangible improvements in assessment skills, levels of confidence and in report writing”.
Head of Service - Local Authority | London Borough
Training
We can deliver relevant and innovative training to all levels of staff from local authorities and other organisations. Recently we have delivered the following programmes:
- Child Sexual exploitation risk assessment
- Management of domestic violence
- Attachment
- Assessment of parents (capacity and risk)
- Undertaking Adoption assessments
- Undertaking Fostering assessments
- Understanding Personality disorder
- Forensic risk assessment
Call us 01206 878178 now with your training requirements – we will provide a cost effective quote to meet your needs…we also have a program of training events organised for which places can be purchased online, please see here for further details
