We are proud to announce the release of our latest publication, “Just Home”. This briefing is powerfully centred around global majority children in care, their lives, their traumas, their needs, and their life-chances. The stark realities are alarming: black children are over-represented in the care system, wait longer for adoption than white children, and are least likely to achieve the lifetime stability and permanency of a loving family through adoption. “Just Home” serves to challenge these bleak statistics and seeks to inspire enduring policy and practice changes for children. Through our partnership with Adoption East Midlands and its partner local authorities, we have been able to challenge these sobering facts and seek solutions. “Just Home” is our shared story –…

A study of place-based school partnerships At The Staff College, we have been committed to championing excellence through equity in education since our inception in 1999. We believe that addressing the needs of those who find learning and socialisation most difficult benefits the entire school community. This belief, combined with our fundamental belief that children and young people learn best when they feel valued, respected and included, has guided our school improvement work. However, recent policy changes in England towards market forces and school autonomy have the potential to further disadvantage learners from economically poorer backgrounds and other vulnerable, isolated and marginalised groups. To address this challenge, we commissioned a study by researchers at the University of Manchester. The resulting…

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A call for action has been issued by The Staff College after a number of concerns have been raised about the high turnover of leadership roles within children’s services.  With tenures of DCSs averaging around three years, it is feared this is having a direct impact on the ability to improve children’s services. At present, the DCS role remains one of the hardest chief officer roles to fill and retain, yet is a critical leadership role responsible for supporting and protecting vulnerable children across the United Kingdom.  Some of the key reasons cited for the high level of position churn include increased workloads, along with a lack of a coherent policy focus on children. In addition, an ‘overload’ of external…

Three people designed the Black and Asian Leadership Initiative (BALI): Patrick Scott who worked for the predecessor organisation that is now The Staff College; Rosemary Campbell-Stephens MBE who is now a freelance international consultant and coach on leadership, following her role as Principal for the National College for Educational Leadership in the Ministry of Education, Jamaica and me (Meera). Rosemary was an associate with the National College for School Leadership in the UK and I had, due to long term health issues, retired from my role as Director of Children’s Services. I have over 35 years experience in local government and was an HMI in the London region.