Help us shape how we deliver support to children and families as we fulfil our ambition to be a Child Friendly Dudley.
Our two available roles are Service Director for Education, SEND and Family Solutions, and Service Director for Children’s Social Care.
Welcome
from Councillor Ruth Buttery, Cabinet Member for Children's Services
As a Council, we want to ensure that every child and young person in the borough has the right to grow up in an environment where they feel safe and secure, have access to the right services and are able to learn, play and grow while fulfilling their huge potential. It is also really important that their voices are heard.
I am so proud of how our colleagues work together with both each other and local partners to ensure we are constantly striving to improve the support on offer for our children and their families.
Over the last few years, staff have gone above and beyond to deliver on our promise, whilst also dealing with the issues of COVID-19.
It takes the whole community to make a difference in our children’s lives, and we work holistically with schools, healthcare and local organisations. Our ambitions can only be achieved when we all work together as one Child Friendly Dudley, where children are at the very heart of everything we do.
Welcome
from Catherine Driscoll, Director of Children's Services
We want your help to turn our aspirations into a reality for children and young people in Dudley.
Since 2019, Children’s Services have been working on major improvement programmes for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and for Children’s Social Care. This work is overseen by the Department for Education (DfE) and NHS England for SEND, and by DfE and an external improvement advisor for Social Care Services. Progress has been made in a number of areas, but there remains a significant amount of further improvement to ensure that our aspiration to deliver consistently good services is achieved and sustainable.
We know that our employees are our most important asset when it comes to achieving our goals for the borough. We hope you will join us on this journey.
Working for Children's Services
Our vision is for Dudley to be a wonderful place for children and young people to grow up. We are Child Friendly Dudley, where we understand that all partners and people need to work together to create an environment where children can flourish.
In Children’s Services, our mission is children first and at the heart of all we do. We have a crucial role to play in ensuring that children and young people receive the support they need to achieve their full potential.
Directorate Structure
Led by Catherine Driscoll, the service is composed of two key areas of focus: Education, SEND and Family Solutions, and Social Care.
We are currently recruiting for two posts:
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Service Director for Education, SEND and Family Solutions
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Service Director for Children's Social Care
Both of these positions will be supported by an experienced senior management team, alongside the director, Catherine Driscoll. The directorate has an establishment of 1149 staff with just over 800 full-time equivalents.
Shape the Service With Us
These are exciting times for Children’s Services. You will play an integral role in shaping how Children’s Services operates and meets the needs of our children, young people and local communities. We are about to embark on a redesign of the service as we embrace restorative practices and move towards adopting a Family Safeguarding model.
Our challenge is to harness the passion and commitment of our staff, to streamline our structure and processes so that capacity is released to work alongside families to improve their experience of our services. We know that we can do this and we are determined to keep children at the heart of everything that we do during this redesign.
We are heading towards a revisioning of our family centres into family hubs, providing a vibrant base in local towns where a range of partners and services will come together with children and families. One priority for us is ensuring that our early years provision is closely aligned with partners through the 1001 Days programme. Early help will be redefined to provide clarity about the breadth of definition and we intend to reshape our MASH and Early Helpdesk into a single streamlined Front Door that will respond swiftly to ensure children are moved to the service they need swiftly.
We will implement a Family Safeguarding model that fits with our valuing family life principles and brings together multidisciplinary teams to focus on supporting parents/carers to meet their children’s needs.
Our education teams are focused on driving up educational outcomes for all children, encouraging schools to be inclusive for those pupils with additional needs and focusing on those vulnerable learners who do not achieve as they should. We will design a system that pays particular attention to transition points for children – entry to primary school, move to secondary, moves between different services and teams. For teenagers with complex needs and/or at risk of the range of exploitation challenges, we will ensure that staff with the right skills and experience work with them, again in a multi-disciplinary way.
The SEND Improvement Programme here in Dudley is well established and started in 2019. In March 2019 the Dudley Area Send Strategy was launched which set out our high-level aspirations for improving the SEND offer across the board. In September 2021, we launched the revised strategy Dudley SEND Strategy. All different, all equal a strategy to SEND us forward.
As we continue to take our steer from children and young people, we are delighted to share that we have recently refreshed our Children and Young People’s Board. The Board provides the overall leadership and integrated accountability for delivery of improved outcomes for children, young people and their families.