Happy, Safe & Loved, Thriving
Welcome to Slough Children First Academy.
The Academy will wrap around the workforce to provide supportive, nurturing, enjoyable and innovative ways of learning.
About the Slough Children First Academy
The Slough Children First Academy ensures that:
- There is a framework for staff to grow and develop throughout out their career.
- A comprehensive learning offer for the workforce, ensuring that we have a learning culture.
- Learning and development is driving practice improvement, ensuring the quality of practice for our children, young people and families within Slough.
- Be a central hub for our workforce well being.
- Promote a workforce that is ‘Happy, Safe & Loved, Thriving’ (our vision at Slough Children First).
Here in Slough, we recognise that our workforce is our most valuable resource, to achieve our ambitious standards of practice for children, young people and families and it is imperative for us to invest in our workforce development and support.
We recognise that to continue on our improvement journey we need to invest in our workforce, bringing together and learning and development opportunities for our practitioners at all stages of their careers, through continuous professional development.
The Slough Children First Academy is for staff employed within Slough Children First. The learning offer and opportunities will be tailored to service areas, recognising that there is not a one size fits all.
Our mission and values
Our mission is to constantly work together to improve the lives of children and young people by protecting, supporting and enabling them to thrive. Our values, which all our staff and partner agencies are expected to work towards, from those in the back office to those on the frontline is to be:
- Child-focused
- Honest and respectful
- Improving constantly
- Looking ahead
- Delivering together
Health and wellbeing
At Slough Children First, our vision is for all children and young people to be Happy, Safe & Loved, Thriving and we have the same ambition for our staff.
We know that without our staff we will not be able to support the children, young people and families of Slough.
Part of our commitment to staff is to look after their wellbeing and this happens through lots of different routes, including:
- Guaranteed personal supervision – where you are able to spend time discussing you and your development with your manager
- Annual appraisals – this will focus on your ongoing development and whether there is any additional support you need
- Employee Assistance Programme – a 24 hour, 7 day a week support service for staff and their families
- Headspace – permanent staff have access to the app, full of useful hints and tips, guidance and wellbeing support
Being heard in the workplace is important, we have a number of mechanisms that allow the staff voice to be heard. This includes:
Shadow Board
PSW drop ins
Weekly staff briefing
Surveys
Qualifying Social Work Programmes
There are various routes into social work that you can take to become a Social Worker. This includes Step Up and Approach to Social Work (formerly known as Frontline) programmes.
Training and development
At Slough Children First, we are keen to ensure that the training package we offer if engaging and supportive of all roles and that it is delivered in a variety of ways, which allows every learner to engage in a way that suits them.
Our training package has been developed based on feedback from staff, partner agencies, young people, government guidelines and also what our own data tells us as areas that we need to develop.
While some of the training may be standardised, annual training, we are also keen to ensure that there is some personalised training available and also that we are responding to the needs of the business and providing support to identified needs.
Whilst our training plan may always be evolving, there is a set programme of training and requirements available to all staff.
