SCIE’s critical review tool is currently under review to ensure it aligns with best practice and includes alignment with CQC Assurance Framework.
The tool is designed to support leaders and practitioners in local authorities and partners with responsibilities for adult care and support, working with people who draw on support to critically assess their ambitions, strengths, and areas for improvement in relation to developing a whole-place approach to strengths-based working. The tool is used through our consultancy offer and enables organisation across social care and partners to understand where they are across 9 areas that through SCIE’s work with the sector we understand are key enablers of Strengths Based Practice.
This tool can be used by anyone who is working in, leading or managing adult social care services or who works for a partner that is seeking to develop strengths-based approaches, such as housing, the NHS and the voluntary and community services and social enterprises. We recommend that it is used by directors of adult social care, Portfolio Lead members for adult social care, assistant directors, heads of service, principal social workers and team leaders and senior leaders from other system partners, e.g. NHS, housing and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. We strongly encourage those using the tool to involve people who draw on support and co-produce any actions which result, a process called co-production.
This is not an audit tool or a method for scoring progress on strengths-based ways of working. Its aim is to support reflection and discussion about where the local place or system is and where it needs to go next.
Recent evidence, along with our experience of supporting dozens of councils, shows that strengths-based ways of working are only successful when you adopt a whole-place or whole system approach, involving not just adult social care, but also the NHS, housing, community organisations and local people. This is why this tool asks responders to think through what needs to change across the whole service and the wider public sector and community.
It focuses on nine critical areas, with associated characteristics of good practice, which need to be considered if we are to make progress towards developing strengths-based working across the whole local place, helping leaders and practitioners understand where they are now and what they need to focus on if they are to make progress.
This tool draws from many evidence sources and good practice resources. These include SCIE’s Care Act strengths-based resources, the Department of Health and Social Care: Practice Framework and Practice Handbook, which SCIE co-authored; the evidence underpinning SCIE and the University of Birmingham’s Strengths-based Practice Leadership programme. It also draws on SCIE’s research on leadership of strengths-based practice and the work of the Social Care Innovation Network, which SCIE delivers in partnership with Think Local Act Personal and Shared Lives Plus, and particularly the publication The Asset Based Area 2.0.
If you would like more information please contact info@scie.org.uk