All our children’s services in BCP Council have to ‘start with the child and stay with the child’, whether our involvement is brief or lengthy. Within our Children's Services, all of our teams share the following core values:
- We will ensure we put the child or young person at the front and centre of everything we do. We will recognise the child’s history and lived experience and ensure it informs our assessments, plans and interventions. We will ensure we hear and act on their voice. We will be aspirational for our children and young people and want as much for them as the best parents do, for their own children. We need to feel the heartbeat of the child in all our work.
- We will build authentic and positive working relationships with children and families. We will be reliable and punctual. We won’t make promises we can’t keep. We will be honest, clear and respectful to children, young people and families. When we need to have the difficult conversations and ask the tough questions, we will do this with empathy, humility, clarity and respect.
- We will use language that children, young people and families will understand; avoiding professional jargon, acronyms or patronising statements. Our plans will be SMART and focused on outcomes for the child/young person. Plans will be undertaken in genuine partnership with families, not doing to or for. Our plans will also clearly explain what will happen if things don’t change.
- We will work flexibly as part of a multi-agency partnership based on timely information-sharing and effective targeted service delivery focusing on the importance of early help. We will safeguard and improve outcomes for children and young people by ensuring they never fall through service gaps. Our interventions will be solution-focused and strengths based as opposed to a deficit model. Our systems and partnerships will be promoted that support trust, collective effort and a shared responsibility.
- In our quality assurance work we will explore whether a real sense of who the child or young person is comes through our recording and how well our practitioners know and understand them. We will develop an organisational culture that welcomes feedback and learning. We all own quality. We will always ask for feedback and from that we will learn how to improve what we do.
- We will provide emotionally intelligent, reflective and focused supervision and management oversight. Working with vulnerable children, young people and families can be complex and challenging. Practitioners should be given all the support they need to consistently achieve high standards of practice. Whilst there is no place for practitioners who do not take individual responsibility for their practice, our core principle is that we are a learning organisation and we will work together to improve.