‘Workforce must be more flexible’

Children’s services workers must develop a new professionalism
that leaves behind working in isolation and puts the needs of the
child first, delegates were told.

There needs to be more flexibility in the wider children’s
workforce beyond teachers, social workers and health workers, said
Gordon Jeyes, Cambridgeshire Council’s deputy chief executive of
children, young people and families.

On the challenges of the children’s agenda, Jeyes said schools
had to become more inclusive.

He said responding to the new agenda was not about legislative
requirements or who gets the director of children’s services job
but about changing society’s attitudes to children.