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Governance

Use this collective governance guidance to ensure that the agency workforce is used appropriately in your local authority and your region.

Governance is a system of rules, practices and processes used to direct activity. Effective governance supports organisations to achieve their purpose and vision. Each local authority will have its own system of corporate governance. Regional improvement and innovation alliances (RIIAs) need to consider how they will exercise collective governance within the regional area. 

Effective collective governance is essential to ensure that the agency child and family social worker workforce is used appropriately in your local authority and your region.

Each region has developed an agency social work memorandum of understanding (MOU).  This is a document which sets out the agreement of cooperation between the regional local authorities about the use of agency social workers. You can read the regional agency social work MOUs on the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) website.

Governance groups provide the opportunity for discussion between local authorities. It is important to exercise a shared responsibility in decision-making about issues impacting regional performance.  Local authorities have a mutual responsibility to raise and share issues and the actions they’ve taken. This could include collectively exploring any additional regional action that might be taken.

Aim of this resource

This resource sets out how to: 

• encourage strong relationships across the regional MOU 
• apply governance principles 
• work with managed service providers (MSPs) 
• review governance in your regional innovation and improvement alliance (RIIA) 
• manage data collection 
• deal with breaches

Building relationships through mutual responsibility 

To ensure the effective supply and management of agency child and family social workers within the regional area, consider the relationship between:   

• commissioners and providers 
• regional partners, the local authority and agency child and family social workers  

In any of these relationships, there may be areas of disagreement and tension over time. Investing in the quality of relationships at every level will support a strengths-based approach to problem solving. 

Understanding the measures through which partners and colleagues feel valued and supported will help build resilient relationships. Such relationships are more likely to be maintained through periods of difficulty. Transparent processes provide clarity and reduce the risk of disagreement. In the governance structure these methods can help to identify and address issues at an early stage such as:   

• a culture of active listening and engagement 
• a well-understood system and process for escalation 

This works best when the escalation process is available to all parties to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) including local authorities, managed service providers (MSPs) and agencies.  

Multi-agency governance arrangements can be complicated and complex. For example, when there are competing priorities between local authorities this can cause friction.   

Also, there can be tension between high-performing local authorities with minimal agency staff and those who may have more agency staff. Both may have different priorities and needs and it may be difficult to find common ground. In effective regional improvement and innovation alliances (RIIAs), local authorities find ways to support each other, sharing knowledge and skills so everyone benefits. 

Effective governance provides a system of support, discipline and accountability. When governance is collaborative and responsibility shared, trust is improved.  This can lead to better outcomes.

Helpful governance principles

There is no single system of governance that works for every region.  Instead, use these governance principles to consider what would work well for your regional improvement and innovation alliance (RIIA).

The principles are:  

• accountability 
• transparency 
• commitment 
• relationships 

 You could consider:  

• how you will develop a sense of shared accountability, essential to the success of the regional arrangements
• how the agreement can be owned by the service within the structure of your governance arrangements 
• how your governance principles are informing data and intelligence activities, and how data and intelligence support your governance arrangements
• how partners (the provider and supplier market/supply chain) understand they need to act together to achieve the best outcomes to improve workforce stability
• being transparent and accountable for making decisions and setting priorities as making sure your supply chain is kept informed is important 
• setting up an agreement to control how data is shared within your region means you can have open discussions and make decisions in everyone's interest  
• how you develop and sustain commitment, which means not giving up when things get tough but continuing to work together to find a solution 
• how you develop trusting relationships, where partners are able to have challenging conversations about critical issues and reach agreement is essential. This makes partners feel supported and listened to and is one of the most important aspects of effective governance 
• developing communication channels such as contact lists, email groups and quarterly meetings. making sure these channels are used regularly to communicate. Make sure that your communication channels are two-way, so you can hear from people as well as inform them 

These governance principles can be applied locally or regionally. It's good practice to review your governance arrangements regularly to make sure they're still relevant and working well.

Planning governance across the region

This will depend on the size of the region. It is helpful for governance groups to be practical and allow time for each local authority to contribute and discuss issues and solutions. 

When planning regional governance, think about how the governance structure reflects the size or complexity of the regional arrangements.   

You may have an existing governance structure you can develop. Once your governance structure is in place, process flow charts can provide an effective reminder to everyone about how decisions are made and information is shared. 

How to make effective governance arrangements

Here are some important questions you may find useful in developing or reviewing your own regional governance arrangements.  As you review these questions, think about your regional improvement and innovation alliance (RIIA) objectives and use the helpful governance principles to assess the effectiveness of your current governance arrangements. Identify areas for development which would support compliance with the agency rules statutory guidance. When thinking about regional governance consider:

• who has ownership of the memorandum of understanding (MoU)/agreement within each local authority (LA)
• who represents the local authority in governance meetings (ideally the director of children’s services (DCS) or an official with the authority to make decisions) 
• inviting others who can make decisions on behalf of the local authority to governance meetings, such as practice leads, human resources, recruitment leads, principal social workers, and workforce development colleagues 
• which working groups in your local authority are linked into the RIIA activities. If there are none, consider how establishing a link might help the local authority, the RIIA and the National Association of Regional Employers (NARE) achieve their objectives

Managing relationships with managed service providers (MSPs) and agencies

Whether the local authority works with an MSP or directly with agencies, developing and maintaining effective relationships with them is critical. This will ensure the MSP or agency understand your needs and can supply you with the agency workforce you need. Regular review of your MSP or agency relationship will help you build and maintain effective communication.  

When reviewing your MSP or agency relationship at the regional or local authority level, consider:

• how effective your current relationship with the MSP or agency is and how you measure this  
• if your agreed deliverables measure the effectiveness of the relationship with the MSP or agency, as well as their performance 
• how you use meetings with the MSP or agency to gather their feedback about what is working well about their relationships with local authority partners 
• if your meetings effectively enable engagement with the agency supply chain to strengthen recruitment campaigns 
• if there are opportunities for you and the MSP or agency to raise issues outside the regular meetings 
• how well your escalation process is working to resolve issues 

Meeting with agencies works best when done in collaboration with other regions. This will help to maintain a consistent message to the market. Thinking about the purpose of the meeting can inform how often you meet.

For example, you could: 

• work with other regions to coordinate meetings with agencies 
• meet with other regional areas to discuss common issues and agree potential solutions 
• meet with agencies to discuss consistent messaging

The benefits of involving MSPs and agencies in designing solutions

Actively involving and engaging managed service providers (MSPs) and agencies in understanding the issues and co-designing solutions are important to develop mutual responsibility.   

This might include involving them in system developments or supply chain engagement.  They might contribute to developing mechanisms for sanctions within existing contracts or provide support to a hiring manager.

Next page: Governance case studies

The resources have been developed by Research in Practice in collaboration with DfE.
Published: 30 October 2024
Last updated: 04 June 2025