Cheshire West & Chester Council

This award is open to a single council or where appropriate a partnership of councils, or a council-owned company. Private sector partners can enter on a council’s behalf, with the permission of the council itself. Children’s services are very much under pressure, and ever more so in the face of challenges facing families and services since Covid-19 hit, adding to the numbers of potentially vulnerable children. There is an imperative to protect vulnerable children, the importance of early intervention and the changing relationship with schools – all under an intense media and now social spotlight. This award is intended to recognise the success of those councils that adopt a genuinely strategic approach to this vital service area in the face of extraordinary challenges, potentially including the Covid response. Entries can focus either on a specific aspect of the council’s work on children’s services or the entirety of its work on children’s services.

Cheshire West Children’s Trust has a pioneering vision for working with children and families across the multi-agency partnership. Enabling our vision is a transformational culture change programme in becoming the first multi-agency partnership embedding trauma informed practice, a shared language and understanding of need and risk. Training over 2,000 members of the multi-agency workforce, we are working with children and families in a way that ensures sustainable solutions, improves emotional health and wellbeing, recovery from trauma and develops resilience. The impact of Our Way of Working (OWOW) has been recognised in our recent Ofsted focus visit.

Attenti Consulting is a specialist consultancy delivering bespoke sustainable solutions to a wide range of health and social care clients. Our work is centred around taking a positive approach to connecting strategic goals with operational practice; improving the quality of outcomes for service users whilst reducing demand pressures by embedding consistent delivery and enhancing the efficiency of services. With a passion to promote best practice across the sector, Attenti also facilitates webinars, commissions research and white papers and hosts events to encourage shared learning and sector-led improvement.