Trauma Responsive Social Work Services Partnership Delivery Group minutes: April 2024

Attendees and apologies

Attendees

Representatives from the following:

• Care Inspectorate (CI)
• Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (CELCIS)
• Children and Young Peoples Centre for Justice (CYCJ)
• Community Justice Scotland (CJS)
• Heads of Social Work Higher Education Institutions (HEI)
• NHS Education for Scotland (NES)
• Improvement Service
• Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC)
• Social Work Education Partnership (SWEP) Programme Office
• Social Work Scotland (SWS)
• Social Work Scotland Workforce and Resources Committee
• Who Cares? Scotland

Items and actions

Overview

This was the seventh meeting of the Trauma Responsive Social Work Services (TRSWS) Partnership Delivery Group. The purpose of this meeting was to give partners a forum to provide updates on their specific actions within the work plan, and to discuss how best we can work together with our partners/stakeholders.

Introductions

The meeting began by the Chair noting apologies from members. All members in attendance provided brief introductions. Apologises noted from Scottish Association of Social Work (SASW).

Note of previous meeting

The group approved the meeting note from the sixth Partnership Delivery Group meeting on 29 January 2024.

Discussion and updates from Partners

Scottish Social Services Council

• SSSC nearing the end of their futureproofing programme which brings in changes to registration, Codes of Practice, Continuous Professional Learning (CPL) and return to practice requirements. Changes relevant to the group include:
  • Codes of Practice for all social services workers and employers changing in May. After consultation it was confirmed only slight changes required. This will now include new requirements for employers and registrants relating to trauma practice and support for those affected.
  • new CPL changes for all social services workers in June. This adds mandatory skills and knowledge requirements on trauma awareness for all registrants. New website will launch for workers and SSSC are currently working with NES and TRSWS team to review resources workers will be directed to
  • Programme Lead acknowledged the significance of reaching these two key milestones
  • return to practice requirements for social workers changed to require learning to be completed on return
• more information can be found on changes at Registration is changing - Scottish Social Services Council (sssc.uk.com)

NHS Education for Scotland

• awaiting funding confirmation from Scottish Government for 24/25
• submitted draft report recommending approach to support alternative caregivers. Waiting on feedback before publishing the final report
• produced report on trauma skilled training delivered to children and young people workforce. Report available on request from NES.
• continuing to work across substance use thinking about what training is required for their workforce
• received reports from the two maternity pathfinders
• Clinical Lead for Victims and Witnesses work engaged in work directly relevant to the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill which is currently at Stage 2 in the Scottish Parliament. This will have implications for the workforce

Higher Education Institutions Heads of Social Work

Unfortunately, none of the Heads of Social Work were able to attend. Updates received were regarding trauma work within their own universities.

• Stirling University – TRSWS colleagues met with Stirling University social work colleagues and provided input on NTTP policy and the work of the TRSWS. The university is currently reviewing their programme and have a development day scheduled in June. Stirling University to seek a further meeting to discuss the skills development section in our programme delivery to see how they can enhance their own skills development module within their course
• Edinburgh University – met with TRSWS Programme Lead and was impressed with the breadth and depth of offer available across the programme and the work ongoing with other social work course providers.
• Glasgow Caledonian University – working with TRSWS team who are delivering trauma skilled learning into undergraduate course. Providing input at the end of 3rd year, with trauma skilled practice session to be delivered just before 4th year students go into placement. Follow-up support to be arranged on return from placement
• Stirling University colleague also highlighted that the antiracism group were not aware of the existence of the TRSWS Partnership Delivery Group
• Edinburgh University colleague highlighted their previous suggestion for SSSC to potentially facilitate a meeting for HEIs to meet and share learning on the theme of trauma

SWEP Programme Office

• restructured SWEP with a small strategic decision-making group at the top, with a delivery group underneath this. Sub-groups will then feed into this group including the pre and post-qualifying groups
• new website scheduled to launch end of May will reflect this governance change
• recently completed an engagement exercise on infrastructure progress to hear views on next steps. High level themes include inconsistencies with social work education content, and lack of robust workforce planning

SG NTTP

• going through a period of transformation following budget considerations and movement of internal staff
• continuing to look at work around maternity, substance use, justice, and alternative caregivers as priority areas.

Update from Trauma Responsive Social Work Services Team

The Trauma Responsive Social Work Services Programme provided input on the implementation support and learning programme, evaluation, professional supervision, and trauma skilled training for newly qualified and early career social workers.  The slides can be requested from the secretariat.

Key details include:

• difficulty of identifying staff at the appropriate trauma skilled level for training for trainers in local areas
• TRSWS team shared details of the data protection impact assessment (DPIA) and progress and confirmed DPIA and Privacy Notice will be shared with group when finalised
• survey on supervision for social work workforce being created in collaboration with SSSC
• TRSWS team are developing a learning product on supervision. The team are carefully considering intended learning outcomes for this learning product and the materials that will be required
  • seeking representations from this PDG group to provide feedback on this work.
• TRSWS team have evaluated the work from the trauma skilled offer for 2023.  A draft summary report will be circulated to partners shortly
• reflection from group on how might we begin to understand the impact of this training on service users.
  • Programme Lead indicated that due to the targeted nature of the programme, we would not expect to see big changes to services immediately. The cumulative effect of all the changes within our work plan would hopefully start seeing changes on a macro scale in 3 – 5 years and we are considering carefully with partners how we may capture this

Delivery partner updates

The delivery partners provided the following updates on work progressing within their own organisations.

Falkirk Council

• Spoke about their development of a community of practice – staff that attended trauma enhanced training – second community practice scheduled for next week which focuses on trauma informed practice in relation to compliance.

Care Inspectorate

• Work is going on internally to make use of the trauma roadmap. Their adult support and protection workstream is helping to build on earlier work focusing on the trauma principles
• Reported that one of their trauma champion has recently moved role

Improvement Service

• Described internal work on feedback they have received from local partners. Highlighted that there is a real appetite to share learning and show the links across workstreams about cross cutting work

Workplan refresh/information sharing

Group agreed to refresh work plan, with a focus to highlight achievements, review priorities and include any new actions. The team will arrange a smaller meeting of action owners over the Summer to develop work plan with the wider group to meet in September to discuss in more detail.

As part of this we will develop a communications strategy to ensure our information is reaching the social work workforce and key partners involved in supporting the workforce.

AOB

• Falkirk representative highlighted that it would be good to hear updates on work from other services like Police Scotland

• Programme Lead will take this into consideration and will get back to the group

• TRSWS team to reach out to antiracism group to discuss potential links across programmes
• Any partners who would like to provide feedback on TRSWS supervision learning product are to submit expressions of interest to the Clinical lead for TRSWS programme

Next steps and actions

• SSSC to link in with HEI representative from Edinburgh University to discuss arranging a potential shared learning event on trauma with social work course providers
• SWEP Programme Office to consider potential TRWS Partnership Delivery Group representation on the SWEP Strategy or Delivery Group
• Group members to email TRSWS Clinical Lead if interested in working together and provided feedback on the professional supervision course
• TRSWS team to reach out to antiracism group to discuss potential links across programmes
• TRSWS team to consider with the wider NTTP colleagues how we feedback to Partnership Delivery Group work in related policy areas such as police etc
• TRSWS team to arrange an extraordinary meeting with workplan action owners to review draft of refreshed workplan. PDG to discuss refreshed workplan at next meeting