The strategic priorities for the next 18 months

1) A stable workforce

Continue to develop Cumberland as a great place to work, understand our identity and what it means to work within children and families’ services.

Launch our workforce recruitment and retention strategy which will support our ‘Grow your own’ model.

Recognising, embracing, and growing talent, and attracting the best people to Cumberland.

Continue to develop our Academy approach to newly qualified social workers and develop the approach further to extend to all new staff across the directorate. Develop leadership within the Academy ensuring that our staff have access to learning and development which supports a confident workforce with the right skills and knowledge. We will do the ‘basics brilliantly’ for all our children.

We will further invest in our staff and volunteer pool to ensure a professional, skilled and knowledgeable workforce across all services for children, families and education including our Youth Justice Services. This will be underpinned by a revised and improved core training offer, supplementary training and continued professional development through regular and reflective supervision.

How will we know we have succeeded?

Reduced reliance on interim agency staff - we will have a permanent, confident and skilled workforce and clear development and progression routes to attract and retain the very best.

2) Right services for the right children at the right time

We will deliver on our priorities within the Family Help and Prevention Strategy to provide innovative, inclusive and compassionate services that nurture the growth, development and well-being of every child. We will create a community where every child receives the right support at the right time through collaborative partnership working reducing the need for children to become cared for.

We will work together with public health to strengthen our 0 to 19 strategy- supporting children to have a better start and enabling families access to good quality services.

We will continue to strengthen our partnerships with health, police, education and third sector organisations across Cumberland.

Support the delivery and commissioning of evidence-based programmes and initiatives tailored to the local need of our families.

Review the current access and delivery of services under CA1989 S.17 ‘Child in Need’ to implement the social care reforms – ‘Stable Homes built on love’.

Support children to attend good quality schools.

Reviewing our home to school transport policy for more efficient use of resources.

Supporting children’s ‘belonging’ in schools and improved attainment, ensuring children get the support they need when they need it.

We will deliver on our priorities within the Local Area SEND and Alternative Provision Strategy 2024 to 2028 as we believe children and young people with SEND and young people who are educated in Alternative Provision deserve high quality, local support, services and provision.

Continue to strengthen the Local Area SEND and AP Strategic Partnership. Through collaboration and honesty with all key partners, we will ensure that every child and young person receives the right support at the right time and in the right place to best meet their individual needs.

We will deliver on our priorities within the Early Years Strategy – Giving Every Child the best Start in Life.

Prevent and divert children and young people from anti-social and offending behaviour.

Ensure restorative practice ethos, principles and approaches are embedded in youth justice service delivery in Cumberland.

Continue to work in partnership with North Tyne and Wear, who provide our youth justice psychology led enhanced case management approach.

How will we know we have succeeded?

Reduction in demand for statutory and child protection services through better support at an earlier point. We will support more children at an early help/child in need level and reduce our numbers of children who are at risk of significant harm, child protection planning and being cared for.

More children will be effectively educated within mainstream schools that can meet their individual needs and aim to reduce children being electively home educated through improved SEND support and good quality alternative provision.

Any first time entrants into the criminal justice system will remain low. Children and young people who come into contact with the youth justice system are supported to improve their behaviour; can integrate back into their communities with ease; and through restorative intervention, are supported to reduce offending and improve their long term aspirational goals for the future.

Increase the number of young children taking up high quality early years provision places within the private voluntary and independent sector and schools.

3) Excellence in practice

Develop practice standards for Family Help and Prevention to compliment the standards in place and launched within children’s social care.

Develop our practice model Signs of Safety, further offering trauma informed, and relational and restorative training across all service areas.

Understanding the voice of the child, their lived experience, working with the family networks and support to develop safe plans that manage risk in a sensible and proportionate way, drawing on strength but intervening when required.

Use of complaints, compliments, family feedback to celebrate success together and learn when we need to get better.

Model good practice, and behaviours - be respectful and curious - value each other and celebrate difference.

Better use and development of performance data, to really understand themes, trends and be able to respond quickly, efficiently and intelligently to changing demands on services as social needs change.

Improve our response to poverty and neglect through embedding the neglect strategy and use of diagnostic support tools.

Work collaboratively with partners to better understand and respond to the impact for children of parental domestic abuse, substance and alcohol use and poor mental health.

Understand and respond to harm outside of the home for children who may be at risk of exploitation, radicalisation, trafficking, criminalisation and modern-day slavery. We will do this by developing a multi-agency, all-age strategy and delivery plan that extends beyond childhood years - recognising harm continues beyond 18 years.

How will we know we have succeeded?

Our audits, feedback and engagement with children, families and partners will demonstrate and evidence our collaborative and outstanding work with those in receipt of education, support, and social care services.

4) Innovative and aspirational services - right home right time/sufficiency strategy

Develop new homes in Cumberland for children whom we care for.

Ensure that our care experienced young adults have access to high quality services, support and access to advice as an extended offer beyond 25 years of age through the development of a dedicated helpline.

Work with the third and private sector to bring children home to Cumberland wherever safe and possible.

Reduce the need for children to live far away from home by improving our sufficiency through a Cumberland first approach to commissioning.

Increase our number of foster carers working creatively and supporting an attractive offer and support package.

Launch of Mockingbird model of fostering support.

Development of regional adoption agency across the Cumbria footprint in partnership with Westmorland and Furness Council that embraces modernity and supports positive adoption outcomes for the child’s life course to improve outcomes and reduce the impact of family breakdown.

Working with regional partners, government advisors and our regulators positively - to improve, share and celebrate best practice - building solid relationships within the sector and partners.

How will we know we have succeeded?

More children who are cared for will be living within their Cumberland community; we will be less reliant on the private sector for children who do need to be in our care; and all our children’s homes will be good or outstanding.

5) ‘Nothing for us without us’ - collaboration, lived experience, wishes and views, and co-production of services with children and families/partners

Ensuring that children, young people and their families have the opportunity to actively participate in the decisions that affect their lives, in the delivery of the services they receive, and in the development of the policies that impact on them.

By holding family, child and professional experiences at the centre of the work we do.

Valuing feedback - using compliments and complaints as an aid to learning and genuinely embracing feedback as a tool to develop and grow excellent services.

Development of participation and engagement services for children, young people, their families and carers - being visible to them and creating space for safety and honesty.

Better engagement with the LGBTQ+ community and Black and Ethnic Minority groups; being cognisant to difference and understanding the challenges marginalised communities can face; being agents of change and advocates of challenge by hearing their voices and creating a culture that is open to learning.

Improve our understanding and response to those who are neurodiverse and working across sectors internally and externally to improve responses and support.

How will we know we have succeeded?

Over the next 18 months we will continue to collaborate and review our services. As a new authority we have ambitious plans and intend to extend these plans even further. We will continue to review the impact of service delivery, and will collaborate and coproduce a five year Children and Family Plan that is written and led by our Cumberland children and families. We aim to launch this plan in April 2026.

Creating a culture where excellent practice can thrive

This is a text alternative of the diagram on page 9 of the Children and family wellbeing strategic plan document.

We will endeavour to have:

• a whole systems leadership approach to planning and service delivery
• manageable workloads across the service
• robust but small enough teams to support excellent practice and case management
• a system-wide approach to improvement and performance
• clearly articulated vision and values
• practice using evidence based methods and tools
• a strong focus on retention, recruitment, and staff development
• a culture of reflective thinking, curiosity, challenge, learning and development
• stable and visible leadership and management
• a service designed to support improved outcomes and make a difference