• New resources to support learning and development for practice supervisors in children’s social care.
• The role of data and research in tackling child exploitation.
• Supporting positive outcomes for people who self-neglect.
• Professional curiosity in safeguarding adults.
• The potential impact of problematic parental substance use for child development.

The learning resources are organised into five key themes:

• Enabling a learning organisation
• Promoting a positive supervision culture
• Building a trauma-attuned and socially just organisational system
• Influencing up and across: the middle leadership challenge
• Your development as a middle leader

The learning resources are available on the open-access website – Resources and Tools for Practice Supervisors. In each section you will find a mixture of knowledge briefings, presentations, films and learning tools:

• Learning tools can be used to review and audit your skills, for example by reflecting on your approach to leadership or to support you to consider how you can influence supervision in a certain area such as embedding observations of supervision.
• Knowledge briefings have a strategic focus and have been developed to support you in building an organisational culture in which practice supervisors, practitioners and excellent standards of social work practice can thrive.

View the resources (open access).

The role of data in tackling child exploitation

Child exploitation is a complex and fast-moving issue. In trying to respond, services in local areas face numerous challenges. The first article looks at the role of data.

The teenage brain – how the research can (and should?) inform practice

What happens neurologically as the adolescent brain develops? How does this impact on teenagers’ behaviour and why it is highly relevant for practitioners to understand? This second article looks at how research can (and should) inform practice.

Blurred boundaries: child exploitation, safeguarding and the criminal justice system

This third article focuses on the challenges of responding to child exploitation, from interviews with experts in threat, risk and harm, youth justice and forensic social work.

This new resource aims to support adult social care practice with people who self-neglect through lack of self-care (for example, neglect of personal hygiene, nutrition, hydration and/or health) and/or lack of care of the domestic environment (for example, squalor or hoarding) where risks to health or wellbeing are extreme and there is reluctance to take action to mitigate those risks.

Cost: £10.00

View the Practice Tool. Available to Partners of Research in Practice with adults membership.

This Strategic Briefing draws from research and Safeguarding Adults Reviews to examine the nature of professional curiosity, some of the barriers that inhibit professionally curious practice, and the enablers that strategic leaders can put in place to create the conditions for a culture of curiosity in their organisations.

Cost: £10.00

View the Strategic Briefing. Available to Partners of Research in Practice with adults membership.

This briefing considers the potential impact of problematic parental substance use across different domains of child development to support analysis and critical thinking about the nature of need and risk for individual children and families. It offers a broad overview of evidence to inform and help guide assessment.

Cost: £12.00

View the Frontline Briefing. Available to Partners of Research in Practice with children and families membership.

Sohila Sawhney

Data shows around 120 young people that London Borough of Brent Council support as care leavers entered care for the first time aged 16+, and that this group is growing every year. Barnardo’s discusses their research to generate meaningful insights so that young people leaving care have better outcomes and receive the support they deserve.

Problematic and harmful sexual behaviours – continuing the journey in Gwynedd

Gina Carty, Anest Eifion and Caryl Ellis

The Gwynedd area describes their journey around problematic and harmful sexualised behaviour and hopes and aspirations for the future.

War on words

John Hamblin

How do we provide services to people without them becoming ‘service users’ – with all of the negative connotations that suggest? Shekinah talks about language and the labels society gives to those with high support needs. How can we aim to put the person before the problem?