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Save Multi-agency services: Retention and career development
Retention
The Audit Commission, in its work on services for disabled children, identified some key features of good recruitment and retention policy and practice. Many of these are directly relevant to all children's services.
It recognises that changes in the workforce, such as staff turnover or sickness, are inevitable. But also that good services do not expect users, or remaining staff, to put up with regular disruption or unreliable services. The features of good practice they identified are:
- Recruit the right people
- attract people from the community by advertising in the right places, and presenting the right image
- have good support and organisation from human resources departments
- use joint agency advertising of relevant posts
- give volunteers clear aims, descriptions of their roles and support. - Retain and develop good people
- provide clear line management and leadership, direction and support
- review and reward good performance; involve users in identifying staff who are performing well
- provide opportunities for personal development and career progression
- listen to staff ideas and support new ways of doing things
- provide flexible working arrangements and childcare facilities. - Develop robust and reliable support
- have good back-up systems and agree and communicate changes to service users
- keep staff briefed and equipped to meet users' needs (e.g. by sharing caseloads). - Attract new people
- in line with the example of youth offending teams (Yots), look for opportunities to employ young people in ways that put them on the economic ladder, for example as receptionists
- think about employing local people as support workers and mentors.
Career development
In some multi-agency settings, there is a perceived absence of opportunities for promotion. This may be because the organisation in question has a limited lifespan or because their structure is very flat, giving little scope for career progression internally. Research also suggests that sometimes, the parent organisations of people working in multi-agency settings do not place a high 'career value' on the time they have spent there.
The introduction of a single qualifications framework for practitioners in the children's workforce will help address this by recognising qualifications across the workforce and enabling people to move more easily to other sectors. This is outlined in the Children's Workforce Strategy.
Existing teams have tried to find opportunities for acknowledging and recording the new skills and competencies that people are developing, so that they can use this as a way of demonstrating how their personal practice is developing during their time in a multi-agency setting.
Reading and resources
Recruitment and retention: A good practice guide for Early Years, childcare and playwork providers (Sure Start, 2003)
Guidance on all aspects of employing staff in early education, childcare and play services, many of which are applicable in other settings.
Workforce reform
This area of the Every Child Matters website gives an overview of what the government is doing in this area as well as access to the workforce strategy document.
Download the contents of this page:
as a Word Document
Last updated on 04/05/2009
