Janice Spencer, OBE
I am very proud to announce that Janice Spencer, the Interim Director of children’s services in Lincolnshire, who I have been working closely with since 2013, has been awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Years honours list for 2019 for services to Children’s Social Care in the county.
Lincolnshire started their whole system implementation of Signs of Safety in 2013 and then went on to become one of only 10 local authorities in the UK to take part in both the first and second round of the England Innovations Project with the aim of aligning all areas of their practice to Signs of Safety including their policies, procedures and IT system.
Janice’s outstanding leadership approach has played a major part in driving innovation and providing the conditions needed for excellent practice to flourish. Janice made her vision to make Signs of Safety Lincolnshire’s practice framework clear to the workforce and partners from the very start and she has never tired of repeating this message. Janice models this way of working with her senior leadership team and has insisted that they learn the skills and disciplines of the approach to inform their strategic planning and decision making so that all leaders model the behaviours they want staff to follow.
Janice’s commitment and drive has never waned; she takes every opportunity to open and close training and delivers the message that this way of working is non-negotiable and here to stay. Her keen interest in seeking out good practice and celebrating this has helped to build staff confidence and created an effective learning environment. Lincolnshire has now been rated as one of the best performing local authorities in the country. Because of this, they are now part of Partners in Practice programme which aims to bring together the best performing authorities, leaders and practitioners so that they can provide peer support to other local authorities to help improve children’s social care practice across the country.
Please read the article from the Lincolnshire County Council website announcing Janice’s honour.
Tracey Hill is a Licensed Signs of Safety Trainer and Consultant and the Signs of Safety Regional Director for the United Kingdom.