Statement of Intent 2006 - Our focus on continous learning and improvement
Continuous Learning and Improvement
For Child, Youth and Family to deliver quality services in the areas of Care and Protection, Youth Justice and Adoption, we also ensure we continue to develop a culture that promotes and supports continuous learning and improvement. This requires a focus on quality, from our systems and processes through to our front line social workers.
This means we are committed to:
- developing new ways of delivering high quality services that meet the needs of children, young people and their families, and our outcomes
- continually adapting and improving current services to ensure they meet the needs of our clients both now and in the future
- working closely and collaboratively with others to support an integrated approach to the wellbeing of children and young people
- building our knowledge about children, young people and their families, and the skills to analyse and act on it
- building our people capability to ensure our staff can play a full role in developing and delivering our services to achieve our outcomes
- building our social work practice to support vulnerable children, young people and their families
- creating a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
Working Closely and Collaboratively with Others
Child, Youth and Family recognises that we operate one service in a continuum of services, all of which contribute to our outcomes, as well as the wider outcomes of wellbeing for children, young people and their families. Achievement of outcomes is most effective when government and the community work closely and collaboratively.
Working with Others at a Strategic Level
Child, Youth and Family works closely with a number of government agencies, iwi, hapu, community service providers and other groups including, schools, nurses, doctors, families and whanau. The diagram below shows the inter-relationship and inter-dependencies between our key stakeholders.
We are committed to strengthening collaborative relationships with others at the strategic level, to work more effectively to achieve positive outcomes for children and young people. Our recognition of the Treaty relationship between Maori and the Crown, and recognition of the needs of Maori and Pacific clients in particular, is reflected in our Te Pounamu strategy (focused on enhancing our services for Maori clients) and the Pacific Responsiveness plan. At a strategic level, these initiatives focus on building Maori and Pacific provider capability.
Working with Others on Our Core Business
In dealing with abuse, neglect and young offenders, we work closely with community service providers. This involves, for example, carrying out plans and orders put in place to keep children and young people safe. This also involves providing and purchasing the services necessary to prevent future harm and neglect, and to improve and restore wellbeing.
The diagram below indicates the contributions at a business level that government agencies, community service providers, hapu, families, carers and other stakeholders play in assisting to improve and restore the wellbeing of children and young people who receive our services.
Recognising that positive outcomes for children and young people who receive our services cannot be achieved without the support of others, our commitment to working closely and collaboratively with them is reflected in the following initiatives:
- building an understanding of the outcomes that Child, Youth and Family works towards, and the complementary roles of government and non-government organisations (NGOs) in achieving these outcomes
- building effective relationships with community providers of family services at local and national levels, including with Maori and Pacifica providers
- developing a strategy for the purchase of services from community providers that support the achievement of Child, Youth and Family priority outcomes
- working closely with other parts of the Ministry of Social Development, as the Family Support services function is established; and helping to ensure improved coordination across government
- strengthening relationships with Police as a means of achieving the goals of the Youth Justice plan
- working closely and collaboratively with others in the social sector, particularly community service providers; and through our leadership, ensuring vulnerable children, young people and their families have access to the “right door” at the right time.
Building Our Knowledge and Acting on it
Child, Youth and Family will undertake a continuous process of improving our ability to capture and utilise information. Doing so will enable Child, Youth and Family to develop a deeper understanding of our processes, the effectiveness of our interventions and our management for outcomes.
Over the coming year, Child, Youth and Family will further develop our ability to:
- improve the use of existing information by building in-house expertise in the development and use of analytics tools
- undertake improvements and changes to our information management system for our social work practice, to capture new data on outcomes
- link Child, Youth and Family’s information to data captured by other agencies where appropriate, to more fully understand effectiveness and outcomes.
Building Our People Capability
People are critical to Child, Youth and Family being able to achieve a culture of continuous learning and improvement. To ensure we have the capability to achieve our outcomes for children and young people in all we do, Child, Youth and Family will continue to focus on those systems and processes that can best enable us to recruit, develop and retain the people capability we need to deliver our services. This will include building on the strategies already in place.
In 2006/2007, we will:
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begin to develop and implement new initiatives identified in our Workforce Development strategy. This includes the continuation of initiatives from the Social Workforce Development strategy and our professionalisation strategies
(see ‘Building our social work practice’, p133). - implement improvements to enhance our ability to attract and recruit high quality people to Child, Youth and Family
- continue with our Leadership and Management Development programme
- enhance the delivery of learning and career development services
- continue to build an environment and culture that engages, retains and values our people. This will include completion of the Pay and Equity Audit and Performance Management, improving our health and safety systems, and further developing core Human Resources infrastructure to provide high quality support
- recruit additional social workers through a recruitment strategy being developed including looking to source more social workers from other jurisdictions overseas
- implement initiatives that continue to develop Child, Youth and Family towards a focus on continual learning and improvement.
Building Our Social Work Practice
A key priority for achieving our outcomes for children and young people will be through enhancing the quality of social work practice. This involves a number of initiatives. They include:
- working together with MSD to help build wider social work capability in the NGO/Family Support services.
- professionalisation of the workforce, including recruitment of qualified staff, assisting existing staff to gain a qualification, and ensuring on-going staff development
- continuing to support staff to achieve competency and registration
- developing caseload management tools
- improving Family Group Conference processes and monitoring of plans and orders
- ensuring staff receive regular and high quality supervision and professional oversight.
To support social work practice, Child, Youth and Family is implementing a number of initiatives. These include, the Care and Protection practice framework, and strategic initiatives such as the Differential Response Model, and the Permanency policy, p135 to p136.
Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement
A number of initiatives have been designed to strengthen our process and systems capability, and assist Child, Youth and Family’s commitment to quality improvement and continuous learning. Over the next three years, work on these initiatives will include:
- continuing to build regional capability and accountability arrangements that ensure effective regional delivery of services
- developing robust and integrated planning processes and information systems
- establishing a long term programme and analytical capacity, to build our knowledge about our business, including the effectiveness of alternative interventions to achieve outcomes
- implementing the Quality Assurance Framework, to systematically guide the development and implementation of continuous improvement systems across Child, Youth and Family
- implementing initiatives that continue to develop Child, Youth and Family’s commitment to continuous learning and improvement.
