Portfolio of Evidence

Question 1

What is the purpose of your team?

Answer 1

The purpose of the team is to ensure that there is a sufficiency of education places for children and young people aged 0-25 in Worcestershire.

Question 2

What are your team’s activities?

Answer 2

Assessing current education providers, Forecasting future education needs based on demographic trends and housing developments,
Changing and expanding existing schools,
Providing new schools.

Question 3

What is your role within the team?

Answer 3

As the administrator for the team, I act as the first point of contact and support the team to carry out tasks and projects.

Question 4

What is the background of Worcestershire Children First?

Answer 4

Wholly owned daughter company of Worcestershire County Council.
Created in October 2019 after the Department for Education directed WCC to change how they delivered Children’s services, separate organisations so that WCF could concentrate resources and time on improving.

Question 5

What are the services provided by WCF?

Answer 5

Foster Care
Education
SEND
Early Help
Children’s Socal Care

Question 6

What are WCF’s values?

Answer 6

Keeping children at the heart of everything we do.
Supporting and empowering parents to care for their own children well.
Valuing education as the best start in life for all children
Acting in a professional and timely way to protect children from harm
Championing equality, diversity, and inclusion

Question 7

What is WCF’s vision for the future?

Answer 7

For Worcestershire to be a wonderul place for all children and young people to grow up in

Question 8

What is WCF’s purpose/mission?

Answer 8

To support children and young people to be happy, healthy and safe

Question 9

What is WCC’s background?

Answer 9

Worcestershire County Council is a local authority which means that it is a public sector organisation governed by the central government and run by a board of elected councillors.

Question 10

How does the political environment affect the organsiation?

Answer 10

The central governement decide how funding will be spent and used by the local authorities which means that political changes and decisions will affect our grants and funding.

Question 11

How does the organisation affect the economy?

Answer 11

WCC and WCF are non profit but contribute to the economy by supporting local people and businesses and bringing in tourism.
WCC generates tourism with events such as:
Three counties fair
Christmas fair

Question 12

What are examples of services provided by WCC?

Answer 12

Adult social care
Travel and highways
Libraries
Health & Wellbeing
The Environment

Question 13

What is the purpose of WCC?

Answer 13

To support the social and economic growth of Worcestershire by providing services to support local people and businesses.

Question 14

What are the 9 protected characteristics?

Answer 14

Accoriding to the Equality and Diversity Act of 2010:
Age,
gender,
race,
disability,
religion or beliefs,
sexual orientation,
gender reassignment,
marriage or civil partnership

Question 15

What are WCC’s people values?

Answer 15

Customer focus
Can do culture
freedom within boundaries

Question 16

How are WCC’s people values used by the organisation

Answer 16

Used in reviews and objective setting
Also used in 360 feedback to structure questions.

Question 17

What is WCC’s corporate plan?

Answer 17

Shaping Worcestershire’s Future
2022-2027

Question 18

What are the areas of focus in WCC’s corporate plan?

Answer 18

Championing open for business
Supporting children and families
Protecting the environment
Promoting health and wellbeing

Question 19

How have you used feedback?

Answer 19

360 feedback - anonymous betwee colleagues
Areas of strengths and areas of weakness
Ways and opportunities to improve
Receive feedback in mid and end of year reviews, an area identified for e to work on is having confidence to present my ideas and opinions.
have taken feedback positively and tried to present more ideas in meetings and organised meetings to discuss ideas to improve efficiency.
Organised meeting to discuss changes to spend profile.
Asked to be involved in more broad finance discussions to develop my knowledge and understanding

Question 20

What are your resonsibilities?

Answer 20

Managing team email inbox and phone queries
Dealing with admin and finance queries
Forwarding on other emails or calls to colleagues
Keeping track of FOI requests in an excel spreadsheet and monitoring progress of responses to meet deadlines
Raising and processing purchase orders, invoices, journals, and monitoring project finances also using an excel spend profile
Organising meetings
Taking minutes, notes, and actions
Proof reading documents to be sent out or published by the team
Accessibility checking
Organising visits and trips
Ofsted Reports

Question 21

How do you use MS Word in your role?

Answer 21

Created template for team workshop session notes.
Proof reading sufficiency reports - use teams site when possible to avoid duplicate documents - make version control much easier, also use track changes.

Question 22

How do you use email in your role?

Answer 22

Microsoft Outlook
Formal communication
Email team members to forward them tasks or queries, check progress of tasks, actions, and projects.
Communicate with schools and other external stakeholders to complete finance tasks, organise visits.
Email other colleagues for help or problem solving
Sending documents
All communication can be saved as an audit trail
General data Protection Regulation (2018)

Question 23

How do you use Skype in you role?

Answer 23

Only for external calls now.
Organised school visits
Organised team away days and christmas meal

Question 24

How do you use MS Teams in your role?

Answer 24

Started as Zoom in lockdown, Teams was more effective in terms of cost and software
Remote meetings
Internal calls and meetings
Can invite external stakeholders by email
Screen sharing
Presenting
Useful for meetings with colleagues to work through tasks, issues and problem solving.
Instant messaging
Group chats with colleagues
Training courses, powerpoint, finnce awareness
Wellbeing week, care leaver’s lived in experience, managing mental health

Question 25

How do you use Outook calendar in your role?

Answer 25

To plan and structure my work week.
Helps me to prioritise tasks and plan meetings when I have time to prepare for the meeting and write up notes afterwards
Organise meetings for the team,
include teams link so all attendees can access the meeting
use online version rather than desktop app to ensure invite sends from SPP so it can be edited by any member of the team and doesn’t appear on my calendar
Room bookings for face to face meetings.
View colleagues’ availability
New starters intro & training
SPP Team meeting
WCF Accommodation and Property Panel
Accessible Mainstream Schools Working Group
Monthly 121s
Finance training sessions
Project catch up sessions

Question 26

MS Teams Sites

Answer 26

Replacing sharepoint
WCF Accommodation and Property Panel - store documents, meeting agenda and action log, terms of Reference, collaborating on documents
Proof reading for pershore review - read documents on teams and collaborated with another administrator to ensure the documents maintained uniformity
SCULPT
Documents and data stored securely, permissions for each member of team
Can also set up different chats for different people. e.g managers
Previous versions of docuement available if accidentally lost

Question 27

What does SCULPT stand for?

Answer 27

Structure, colour and contrast, use of images, links, plain english, and table structure

Question 28

Is there a process you follow when receiving phone calls?

Answer 28

Try not to let the phone ring more than three times before answering
Call back missed calls and voicemails as soon as possible - email if not possible using master education list to find caller
Summarise discussion in email afterwards as record of conversation , save to file

Question 29

How would you deal with a telephone complaint?

Answer 29

Active listening
Take notes during discussion
Summarise information back to stakeholder after they have finished talking to ensure details are correct
Make sure not to make false promises
Inform them of next steps you wll take
Check if they wish to file a complaint
If so, direct them to complaints form (WCC website)
Offer to fill in form with them over the phone
Discuss with line manager to decide next steps
Keep stakeholder informed on what is being done about the complaint

Question 30

How do you use Kallidus in your role?

Answer 30

Mandatory E-Learning
Most recent, code of conduct and core employment policies, GDPR
Code of conduct - gifts and bequests, confidentiality, drugs and alcohol, media
GDPR - laws, punishments, what to do