The All Party Parliamentary Group for Children has held two meetings in November:

• Tuesday 20 November: The Children’s Workforce: An Overview With speakers Jane Haywood, Chief Executive, Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC), and Hilary Barnard, Consultant, Children’s Workforce Network (CWN)
• Tuesday 26 November: Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families

Tuesday 20 November: The Children’s Workforce: An Overview

Jane Haywood, Chief Executive, Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC), said that the CWDC had been set up to lead reform in three key ways - as a Sector Skills council to set standards; to lead work at a local, regional and national level to develop the work force in new ways; and as a delivery and funding body for programmes that develop the workforce. The children’s workforce is a very complicated workforce, and developing joint working properly is critical to developing it to meet children’s needs.

Their work has a role to play in addressing issues of child protection; exclusion, poverty and children’s outcomes; youth crime; and school standards and achievement. CWDC is able to look at where the cracks are in services and try to start correcting them. First, they need to get services to work more effectively together, as early intervention can make a huge difference, and initiatives such as Surestart provide them with lessons in what can make a difference.

Every Child Matters means that they are trying to design services where the children and families are at the core. CWDC is developing a Common Induction Standard for the whole children’s workforce, which will include developing a common language of terminology used in the sector. They are also developing an Integrated Qualification Framework to make sure that certain key issues are at the core of qualifications to make sure that everyone is working in a child-centred, multi-agency way.

They are working to develop leadership at all levels of an organisation, so that all staff have to confidence and the abilities they need. They are also listening to children and young people and their families to help shape what they are doing. They want all parts of the workforce to see themselves as having the same ultimate aims and they should all share an understanding of what it is like to be a child and be able to see things from the child’s perspective.

One of the problems services face is that they are still dealing with crises instead of early intervention and prevention. The sector needs to

Tags: Children's Plan, CWDC, Ed Balls, Every Child Matters, Integrated Qualifications Framework, Parliament, Qualifications, Training, Workforce planning