I am delighted to present the Annual report for the Adult Principal Social Worker (PSW) for 2024-25. This report provides an overview of the role of the PSW and the work which has been undertaken at North Lincolnshire Council to support excellent quality social work practice and areas of development which are being progressed. The report provides an opportunity for oversight of our statutory responsibilities in relation to social work, safeguarding and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.
Excellent quality social work practice cannot be achieved in isolation, and at North Lincolnshire we pride ourselves on working well together in a One Council, one family, one place approach. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all staff, leaders and
partners who work tirelessly, creatively and passionately supporting the delivery of adult social care and excellent outcomes for people, enabling them to live in their own homes, families, jobs and neighbourhoods.
I am proud to hold the role of PSW in North Lincolnshire, and to work with such an incredible workforce who demonstrate a clear commitment to achieving the best outcomes for the people they are working with. Everyone works as a team and supports each other to excel in what we do well, as well as continuing to strive to learn, develop and enhance all that we do. I am pleased to be able to provide assurance that the quality of our practice has developed further over the past year, which is testament to our workforce and leaders in social work.
This year there has been some significant areas that we have been focused on which impact on social work practice and outcomes for the people we work with. We have commenced our service review to strengthen and align further to our Community First approach enabling enhanced delivery of our Adults Strategy, supporting the way we work with people and establish connections to their neighbourhoods. We have worked as part of the project team for the implementation of Liquid Logic which will transform the way we record and enable our workforce to have the best tools available for them to evidence people’s strengths, outcomes and risk management.
I am committed to continuous learning and development alongside my colleagues in the leadership team and the social work workforce. We strive to know ourselves well, to focus on areas of development and be open to change. Our aspirations for development are highlighted within this report.
I hope that you enjoy reading this report and that it does justice to how proud I am to be a leader of social work in North Lincolnshire and of our amazing social work workforce.
Becky Jackson
The role of the Adult Principal Social Worker is set out in the Care Act 2014.
The purpose of the role is:
The role of a Principal Social Worker includes:
Our social work teams work with adults and their families as well as children and their families who are transitioning from children’s services. Our dedicated Carers team work with the carers of the people through assessment and support.
Our team’s work is driven by the Care Act and other legislation including the Mental Capacity Act and the Human Rights Act and involves:
Here are some numbers that show the work our Carers teams carry out:
We ensure we are Safeguarding Adults, supporting people to live safely and independently, preventing harm and reducing the risk of abuse or neglect to adults with care and support needs. Working with people in a way that supports them in making choices and having control about how they want to live is integral to adult safeguarding.
92% of people said they now felt safer and would know how to get help in the future, and everyone felt the person supporting them had the right skills and knowledge.
Of the views and wishes that were expressed, 95% were felt to have been either fully or partially achieved as a result of the enquiry actions.
CQC said – safeguarding enquiries are dealt with in a timely way – with a strong focus on ensuring a personalised approach with the wishes of the person at the heart.
The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) Team work with people who are, or who may be deprived of their liberty. DoLS ensures that people who cannot consent to their care arrangements in a care home or hospital are protected if those arrangements deprive people of their liberty.
The total number of DoLS applications received during 2024/25 was 1623 which is a 18.18% increase in comparison to the previous year. We are proud of our quality and timely responses to DoLS applications.
“The BIA came today, she was lovely. Mum had to go to the meeting on her own as I couldn’t take any more time off work. She was really nervous abut going on her own but mum said she was really lovely and very sympathetic”
“Many thanks for your help. I have had a few reasons in my life to involve myself with matters relating to social services. Now I am doing so, I find the consistent approachability of the Scunthorpe social services to be refreshingly superb”
” I was not in a good place myself at the time as I felt terribly guilty that I could no longer care for my husband at home, but the BIA was kind and patient and gave me time to talk, she helped me see that I had done everything I could, she
helped me understand what a DoLs was. When I read her report, I could see that she had really listened to me and my husband. I am so grateful for her time and thoughtfulness”
Our Practice Assurance Framework aligns with our Assurance, Learning and Improvement Framework. This has evolved further this year. It presents various methods of gaining assurance of the quality of social work practice. This supports a robust line of sight to practice and enables us to have a holistic picture of the experience of people who our social work and carers teams work with.
The framework uses measures which are aligned with our practice model and adult strategy.
We have a well-established practice model and evidence of our strength based, person centred, relational approach.
The voice of the person is central in practice and recording. Our feedback from people evidences that they feel listened to.
Quality supervision is provided on a regular basis and is valued by the workforce.
There has been further development in implementing our community first approach including network treasure hunts with staff.
There is a strengthened commitment of our workforce in supporting people to live in their own homes and neighbourhoods.
We want to further develop our use of ‘ordinary’ language, continuing to record from a strengths-based perspective.
Through our new recording system the timeliness of recording assessments and support planning is an area for development.
We want to strengthen rights-based practice regarding Mental Capacity to ensure compliance with legal and best practice standards.
Feedback:
We continue to utilise our Practice Assurance Reviews to audit social work practice and provide assurance in other areas of Adults and Health including housing. This process is well embedded from a management perspective. We are further developing the practitioners’ self reviews further to ensure they are meaningful and embedded within supervision expectations.
Single Point of Access, Networks, LD, MH, Carers, Housing (Rehab & Recovery, OT:
Managers:
Pre-review document check:
Questions based on our practice model.
Scoring 1-5.
Practitioners:
Wider themes collated via PSW report – Action plan – Quality Performance Assurance Review (Held Quarterly)
Most practice review questions were scored as good, very good or excellent (79%). This has increased by 12% from last year. 99% of questions did not identify any significant areas for development. Where ‘some’ areas of development were identified, these were fed back to practitioners and themes considered for wider practice development sessions.. These were in 20% of questions which is a reduction of 11% from last year.
All 5 of the areas we assess against were an average score of good. This is our expected standard. The highest scoring question relates to the voice of the person being central (Q2). The lowest scoring question relates to legislation and policy informing practice (Q5) although this is still at the expected standard of good.
Best things about working for North Lincolnshire Council:
We actively seek feedback from our workforce in several ways. This year we have ensured that we have worked with our staff on areas of development they have identified. Some examples are shown below:
Engagement: Our staff induction includes sessions held by the leadership team so new staff have an opportunity to meet the DASS, Assistant Directors, Heads of Service and Principal Officers to discuss key strategies and how we work with people and partners.
Feedback: A social worker at one session told us that new staff would benefit from more visual procedures in flowcharts.
Action: A group of new and existing staff have worked together with the PSW and Lead Officers to create a ‘social work procedures manual’.
Impact: New staff are more easily able to navigate key procedures which supports their induction and focus on outcomes for people.
Engagement: In response to our 2024 Employer Standards check we wanted to find out more from our unregistered workforce on their perspectives via focus groups.
Feedback: One of the areas of feedback related to allocations and how decisions are made in relation to who is best and most appropriate to work with a person and their family.
Action: We worked together to create a caseload and allocations policy to support lead officers and the workforce in decision making.
Impact: People are appropriately matched with the workers who is best to work with them.
Engagement: Each year the DASS and PSW host engagement events for students, apprentices and NQSW’s. This year we also held an engagement event for Lead Officers, Senior Social Workers and Practice Educators.
Feedback: The apprenticeship route is a huge benefit for our workforce, but there has been a noticeable impact on the wider capacity within teams.
Action: Moving forward consideration will be given to the resource and capacity within teams when recruiting apprentices.
Impact: Apprentices will have an enhanced more personalised experience and there will be less impact on teams capacity.
Social Work Apprenticeship:
Recruitment and Retention data:
Stats to show the success of development:
In 2024-25 we supported:
We supported 10 social work students in 2024-25 in placement
100% of our registered social workers were re-registered by the SWE deadline in November 2024.
We have had one fitness to practice concerns this year. We are unaware of the outcome as the person left the organisation. There were no areas of development highlighted by SWE for us.
We received some excellent feedback from an external trainer who has delivered an element of our Post Qualifying Standards for Supervisors programme in relation to our workforce:
“I have genuinely enjoyed meeting and working with all of your staff, they have been a joy! It has been a while since I have worked with staff who are all so positive and passionate about their work with keen interest on their development”