How organisations support or hinder good practice: Part 1

This film is part of the Working with uncertainty and risk in children's social care: Video learning resources.

The context in which we work greatly affects our practice. Professor Eileen Munro shares what we can learn from literature from other disciplines on learning from failure, including how we can review practice and examine the organisational factors that influence how we work with families.

Talking Points  

This video looks at:  

• Learning from reviews of adverse outcomes in the fields of aviation and healthcare.
• Recognising how the context affects individual action.
• The issues that stem from using a person-centred approach to look at what happened when things go wrong in child protection.
• The importance of organisations trusting professionals to use their skills and expertise when working with families rather than relying on rigid procedures and processes.
• The alternative of a system-centred approach, which goes beyond human error and looks at the context we work in and how this can contribute to errors.
• Examples of innovation.

Reflective questions    

1. Does your organisation have a person-centred approach to failure? What effect does this have on you and your team?
2. Are your skills and expertise recognised and trusted by leaders in the organisation? What is needed to improve this?
3. Do you use checklists in practice? How does this help or hinder your work?
4. How confident are you in asking for help and advice from others?

Related resources  

• Child protection in court: Outcomes of care proceedings before and after care proceedings reform (Webinar 1). 
• Child protection in court: Outcomes of care proceedings before and after care proceedings reform (Webinar 2). 
• Key safeguarding issues, challenges and implications – learning from serious case reviews.
• Learning from the Greater Manchester Scale and Spread Programme: Spreading innovation across a city-region (2021).