Welcome to Employer Zone Insights, a podcast from Community Care showcasing social work practice and leadership from around the country. This edition is brought to you in partnership with
The London Borough of Newham.

The London Borough of Newham’s children and young people’s services is on an improvement journey to Newham’s children’s services were inspected by Ofsted in February 2019. The inspection resulted in an “inadequate” rating for services. And since then, there have been subsequent monitoring visits showing positive signs of improvement and that the service has delivered a well-coordinated response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this episode, we speak to Tim Aldridge, corporate director of children's services at the London Borough of Newham and Joyce, a social worker in the children and young people’s service, as the council continues on its improvement journey.

The episode covers:
- An overview of Newham’s improvement journey progress.
- Newham’s ambition to become a centre of excellence for social work practice and how a reshaping of its practice model is helping to achieve that.
- A perspective from social worker Joyce on how Newham’s improvement journey is enhancing her work-life balance.

Community Care readers can access additional resources and a written transcript on the Community Care website: https://www.communitycare.co.uk/