Meet the president - Kim Bromley-Derry, president, Association of Directors of Children's Services.
Lauren Higgs
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Kim Bromley-Derry has just left a meeting with the children's inter-agency group. He's had a busy day, but has managed to squeeze in half an hour for our interview.
Sat on a bench in a bustling community centre, the director of children's services (DCS) for Newham is excited about becoming president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services.
"A role like this puts you right in the heart of opportunity and challenge. We're at a time when the ability to influence and represent directors and the whole sector is really exciting. There are so many policy issues around at the moment such as Laming, safeguarding and 21st-century schools," he says.
But it's a double-edged sword. The exciting bits of the job are also the most challenging. He says: "Any one of those things could absorb all of your time. It's about making sure that we are able to get involved and influence."
Leading the leaders
So how do you lead a group of leaders? Bromley-Derry wants to reflect the views of the sector. It's essential that other DCSs tell him what they think, he explains.
"In a sense it's a distributed leadership model. What I have to do is ensure that it's an association where everyone is a leader and can represent the association," he says.
Helping develop the leadership training programme for DCSs with the National College for School Leadership (NSCL) will be one part of his new job.
He's been talking to Steve Munby, chief executive of the NCSL, about how the mentoring aspect of the programme will work. He's not sure he'll have time to coach a colleague in his presidential year, but there's always next year.
"One of the key issues is helping the NCSL understand the role of the DCS. Obviously they're coming from the perspective of leadership in schools so we're looking at what's transferrable across from schools into children's services," he says.
Laming report
Another key task for Bromley-Derry will be responding to the Laming report. He says the report is practical and sensible, given the current situation. And he's glad Laming believes in Every Child Matters.
The challenge now, he says, is to make sure that policy is turned into practice in all, not just some, local authorities. It's going to be a challenging task, he admits.
Bromley-Derry disagrees that more DCSs need to come from a social care background.
"Some of the best social care authorities are led by educationalists. In the same way, some of the best education authorities are led by colleagues from social care. I think that it's dangerous to look back and say leadership was fantastic in the previous arrangement," he says.
He's speaking as a director with a social care background. His first job was as a residential care worker in a children's home.
Improving the system
What will he do if there's another Baby P or Victoria Climbie on his watch? The most important thing is not to be complacent, he says, because child deaths do happen.
"We need to address the issues that are repeating themselves, what are the things that we're not getting right, around information sharing, around common practice frameworks, around everyone understanding what their role in this is. You need to be very focused on improving the system," he says.
Bromley-Derry's presidential year will inevitably need to get to grips with the small issue of the global economic downturn. DCSs will have to make sure services meet the needs of children and families in these troubled times.
"In one way the recession hasn't changed anything because we've never had enough money to do everything we wanted to. Demand is always high, you always have finite resources," he says.
Now DCSs must be more focused on the things that have the greatest impact, he explains: "If we're going to invest money we have to have more empirical evidence of what makes a difference."
KEY ISSUES: Kim Bromley-Derry's views on ...
Being a DCS - "My view is that it's one of the most challenging jobs in the public, or any sector, but it has the potential to be the most rewarding."
Sharon Shoesmith - "As leaders we need to be very aware of public opinion, we need to be able to deal with the media effectively."
Joint working - "Social workers know what social workers do. Youth workers know what youth workers do. But often professionals don't understand what each other do."
ContactPoint - "There is no doubt that the principles underpinning ContactPoint are absolutely right. But it's not without it's problems of implementation."