The Workplace practice self-assessment toolkit with an Appendix containing the questions is a resource for agencies to examine and enhance their workplace practices.
It’s designed to support cultural change within the child protection and family support sector and contribute to the delivery of quality services for children and families.
The toolkit can be used by people working in the child protection and family support sector for self-assessment and to seek feedback from clients and colleagues.
Identifying workplace practices for the child and family support system
Workplace practices are the processes and behaviours that people undertake in an organisation to deliver services and complete other organisational or corporate activities such as recruitment, quality management and governance.
It includes the manner in which these tasks are carried out and the quality of interactions among staff and between staff and clients.
Workplace culture, formal procedures and informal routines all have a strong influence on workplace practices.
In 2015, stakeholders and specialists from across the child protection and family support system participated in a two-day workshop to identify the workplace practices that align with and reflect the culture change described in the Queensland Child Protection Commission of Inquiry final report, and the criteria for each attribute.
The workplace attributes assessed in the toolkit are:
- Strength-based practice
- Leadership
- Collaboration
- Cross-cultural practice.
Criteria for assessing the attributes of workplace culture
The four attributes of workplace culture (strength-based practice, leadership, collaboration and cross-cultural practice) are quite broad, and further details were required to identify the specific behaviours that are indicative of the desired workplace practices. There has been 6 to 8 criteria identified for each attribute.
Each of these criteria were then translated into workplace behaviours and these were developed into a set of questions (the toolkit) workers, supervisors, managers and executives can use to assess their own practices and the workplace practices of their teams and organisations.
The toolkit presents the questions from 2 different perspectives:
- Self-assessment – workers assess their own practice
- Feedback – from clients or colleagues, etc.
Categorising workers
The toolkit can be used by most people working in the child protection and family support sector. Sets of questions have been developed for 4 categories of workers – frontline workers, human services staff, managers and executives, and service network members.
Frontline workers come into contact with many different clients – children, young people, young adults, parents, families, carers, Elders and community members.
In order to capture the full range of practices required to work successfully with these clients, 5 sets of questions have been developed for frontline workers (depending on who they work with). The other categories of workers each have a single set:
- SET 1: Frontline workers – working with children and young people
- SET 2: Frontline workers – working with young adults
- SET 3: Frontline workers – working with families and parents
- SET 4: Frontline workers – working with kinship, foster and respite carers
- SET 5: Frontline workers – working with Elders and community members
- SET 6: Human services staff – working with colleagues
- SET 7: Managers and executives – working with staff
- SET 8: Service network members – working with other network members