Spring Webinar Series: Building a healthy, happy social care team

A healthy, motivated and stable social care workforce is vital for providing support for the most vulnerable children and young people in our society. Children’s social care services can be challenging, stressful and emotionally taxing places to work. In an environment of increasing demand, strained resources and remote working, how can we identify and tackle the issues affecting social care teams?

In this webinar, What Works for Children’s Social Care will share findings from projects aiming to support children’s social care practitioners to improve their wellbeing and outline small changes that local authorities can make to address some of the existing issues in the sector. We’ll hear from researchers working on the following interventions about how they are implemented, the challenges faced and next steps:

• Happier, Healthier Professionals, which seeks to support the profession by understanding how local authorities might address rates of employee sickness absence and turnover.

• Schwartz Rounds, which explores the use of a structured forum for discussing the emotional and social aspects of children's social work.


We will also hear from researchers working on other evidence-based approaches to improve workforce wellbeing, as well as children’s social care practitioners about their experiences. 

Following presentations from a panel of esteemed guest speakers, there will be an opportunity to join the conversation and ask questions.

Contributors: Dr John Moriarty - Lecturer in Education and Social Work, Queen's University Belfast; Dr Magdalena Soffia, Work & Wellbeing Lead, What Works Centre for Wellbeing; Shibeal O'Flaherty and Chris Mitchell - Researcher, What Works for Children’s Social Care; Dr David Wilkins - Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Cardiff University and Assistant Director of CASCADE

Additional panel members: Anna Bacchoo, Director of Practice, What Works for Children’s Social Care; Floriane Landor, Principal Children’s Social Worker, People Directorate, Bracknell Forest Council; Liz Maslen, Children’s Workforce Development Manager, Nottinghamshire County Council; Jon Robins, Social Work Practice Consultant, Nottinghamshire County Council

Chair: Dr Michael Sanders, Chief Executive, What Works for Children's Social Care

Please note we will be recording this session.