Signs of Wellbeing practice intensive workshop

Country: United Kingdom

This six-day advanced course is designed to allow participants to spread their learning out over a 2-week period, providing them with an opportunity to practice the techniques learned in between sessions. It is important that candidates are available for all of the course dates so that they fully understand the safety planning framework and how to apply this in practice.

We are excited to offer this six-day safety planning workshop that is bespoke for Early Help services using the Signs of Wellbeing^® approach. The training is aimed at practitioners and managers from within Early Help services and the partner agencies they work with. We will use real life situations to help guide participants through a process using the core learning methods of Signs of Safety i.e group supervision and Appreciative Inquiry.

Early help plays a pivotal role in supporting families and their networks at an early stage to care and protect their child/ren. If done well, we know that this can often prevent situations from escalating and child protection agencies having to become involved. In addition, there is often an expectation from the family, social care and other partner agencies that delivering a service will ‘fix’ the problem and is often one of the reasons why families bounce in and out of services. In some situations, this may be helpful, but often it does not tackle the underlying cause of the issues. This in turn means that there is little benefit for the child and their family, any short-term improvements are often not sustained over time because we have failed to help the family think their way into, through and out of their problems and come up with their own meaningful plans, instead making them reliant on professionals to step in to support and resolve issues when problems arise.

Early intervention safety and wellbeing planning involves creating a structured process (trajectory) built from a shared risk assessment, focused on clear explanations about why everyone is worried about the child (Critical Worries) and what everyone wants to see for them to no longer have a worry (Wellbeing Goals). From this foundation, wellbeing planning typically involves:

• The professionals getting very clear about their trajectory for the wellbeing planning process in the case including a clear timeframe
• Creating shared agreement with the family about the steps and timeframes before proceeding
• Involving the children using a variety of children’s tools to ensure we hear their voice
• Building a naturally connected network around the immediate family and child
• Creating a Words and Pictures explanation from the adults for the children
• Together with the parents and network building a behaviourally-detailed wellbeing plan that is demonstrated over time and can be explained to the children
• Monitoring that shares responsibility for tracking progress and allows the case to be closed

This six-day program is aimed specifically at Local Authorities who are undertaking a whole system implementation of Signs of Safety.

We will begin with a detailed exploration of all the steps of the Signs of Wellbeing assessment and planning process before diving into the work of practicing these skills focusing on a case study. From this work each participant will create a detailed written trajectory describing the assessment and planning steps including time frame for the case, clear critical worry statements and wellbeing goals, a draft Words and Pictures explanation, exploring bottom line requirements and critical questions to lead the wellbeing planning process, to involve the parents, children, and network and to address the most critical issues in the case. All participants will have learned how to plan out and deliver the work through the life of the case.

All participants will receive detailed learning materials as part of the program.