How senior leaders in one authority maintain a culture of excellence

Stuart Ashley and Steph How say neither would be in their senior leadership positions today if Hampshire County Council had not given them the space to innovate, develop and hone their social work skills.

And it is this space to innovate that they hope will attract a new generation of social care practitioners to the authority.

Stuart Ashley, director of children’s services

“It’s a forward-thinking organisation and it’s somewhere where you’re encouraged to try out new things and to be your best,” says Stuart, who was appointed director of children’s services at the authority in April 2023.

Stuart has been a senior manager in Hampshire children’s services for over 15 years, while Steph, who became deputy director of children’s services just over 12 months ago, joined the authority as an assistant team manager in 2003.

“I am absolutely clear that my five years involved in leading our Transforming Social Care [programme] made me the strategic thinker that I am,” Steph says.

Transforming from good to outstanding

Hampshire’s Transforming Social Care programme emerged from its 2014 Ofsted inspection, where its children’s social care services were found to be ‘good’, with elements of ‘outstanding’.

The authority saw this as an opportunity to use the skills and abilities of its directorate and social care staff to deliver an outstanding service across the board.

Out of the Transforming Social Care programme, Hampshire developed the Specialist Intensive Worker Hub (SIWH) project, which was designed to keep more children safely at home and improve outcomes for children at risk of coming into care.

As keeping all children safely at home is not always possible, a new ‘step across’ process has been introduced under the project to help children move from one kind of placement or setting to another, such as from residential to fostering.

“There are so many opportunities in Hampshire to think strategically and be involved in strategic direction,” says Steph.

“I think our transformation work allows people throughout the entire organisation, as social workers, to be involved in a variety of ways – whether it’s low-level project activity, piloting a project or being on a workstream of activity.”

Steph believes that being part of that early transformation work gave her the space to transition from being a manager in an operational role to a manager in a strategic role.

A decade on and Hampshire is one of the few authorities found by Ofsted to have consistently performed well.

“Whilst we might be an outstanding children’s services department, we continue to consider what outstanding looks like, which I think is really critical because you can become complacent,” says Steph. “But we continue to push the envelope to be better than we’ve ever been.”

Steph How, deputy director of children’s services

While this is never at the expense of the services the authority delivers, it allows Hampshire to keep the basics excellent, Steph adds.

“If we keep the basics excellent, then it means that we can be braver around the edges,” she says.

Open to change

“Hampshire is an organisation that is not afraid to try different things – not necessarily waiting for opportunities that are presented by the Department for Education, but really leading the way in the sector to be able to improve outcomes for children and families,” says Stuart.

The council has embarked on a new phase of its transformation with the launch, in April 2024, of the Family Help model.

The model aims to improve outcomes for children and young people by keeping more children safely at home, reducing demand for statutory children’s social care services and increasing recruitment and retention of staff.

Hampshire’s family support service and the children’s assessment and safeguarding teams have been merged to create the first Family Help teams, which will work closely with local bodies such as schools and libraries.

Photo: Danikprihodko/Pexels

“Our new model will enable children and families to access support easily in their local community,” says Stuart.

“It aims to foster multi-agency and partnership working to ensure families are working with the right professionals at the right time with the right level of support. Overall, creating Family Help teams will encourage a consistent approach and result in fewer transition points for families who journey through social care; professionals will step in and out of a child’s network as needed.”

The county council is also looking to implement five new transformation projects. Steph explains that one of these projects includes a review of Hampshire’s reunification agenda, and whether there are greater opportunities within the provision of section 17 (child in need) support to continue to prevent children requiring child protection intervention or being taken into care.

Good workforce

But none of this is possible without a good workforce, Stuart says.

“They are our greatest asset,” he says. “The quality of people that we have practising and managing – at times, it blows me away. They’re tremendously skilled people. Our job as leaders is to create the right environment so that social workers and frontline managers feel safe and supported to practise.”

Maintaining this excellence comes through trusting the workforce and allowing them “to exercise their professional judgment and support them with that,” says Stuart.

Ensuring that the needs of children and families remain central is also key and is something that both Stuart and Steph believe that they would not want to lose sight of, even in their senior roles.

“I have a level of detail around specific children, even in our large shire authority, that I personally never ever want to lose,” says Stuart. “You can’t lead a workforce delivering services to children and families if you forget what you came into the vocation for.”

Steph agrees: “I have always said categorically that no matter where I move up to in the organisation, if I lose sight of why I’m a social worker first and foremost, and I lose touch operationally with children and families, I don’t want to do the job anymore.”

Read more about children’s services at Hampshire County Council here.