10
Increasing Attendance at
Online Safeguarding Children Training
Debbie Greaves & Joe Elliott (Social Workers)
Supported by Maria Emilsson & Norma Cairns
SBNI Safeguarding Children Level 2 training is traditionally
delivered face-to-face and is classed as mandatory.
This training ensures the workforce is adequately prepared to
safeguard some of the most vulnerable in society.
The COVID-19 pandemic prevented face-to-face training and
necessitated a move to online delivery. However, online
attendance was diminished which could ultimately impact on
the quality of service provided to service users and carers.
Outcome
We achieved an improvement from 67% to 70% attendance.
Process
We ran 7 test cycles and measured attendance after each
change idea.
Balancing
Personalised emails were sent to individual staff and
managers rather than generic auto generated emails from the
training platform. These were tasks not previously carried out
which led to an increase in administration.
• Continue testing and collecting data, including feedback.
• Continue to measure number of staff who attend post registration as more data
points are needed to determine if changes are making a sustained improvement.
• Test if changing the learning platform to reduce practical and functionality barriers
has an impact on the improvement initiative.
• Share outcome with team colleagues via 'Team Teach' event and make data available
to wider Learning & Development colleagues.
• Spread effective changes to other training delivered by the wider team.
Why is this important to service users and carers?
Measures
Next steps
Aim
Our goal of 85% was affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic as some Social Work teams
were redirected to other service areas and some were impacted by shielding/selfisolating/sickness.
However, we have achieved a moderate increase in attendance following
registration.
The most effective change idea was test cycle 6 which was more authoritarian and
highlighted to individual staff that managers would be notified of non-attendance. Although
this increased attendance it did not reflect our values regarding how we seek to work in
partnership and deliver training, and was discordant with adult learning theories.
The astronomical point of 100% attendance was a mandatory session for students
embarking on their first practice learning opportunity.
This project has helped us to understand barriers and change the way we communicate with
staff to help them prepare and engage in online training.
What has it achieved?
What did we do and why?
Attendance at online training was notably lower than face-toface
and we needed to understand why staff registered and
subsequently failed to attend. To establish baseline data we
measured the number of staff who registered but did not attend
over a period of 5 events.
We surveyed 67 staff and obtained an improved understanding
of the barriers, as demonstrated in the Pareto below. This
informed our change ideas.
Change Ideas that we tested:
Test 1: Sent group generic reminder to all registered staff 1 week before
event.
Test 2: Sent group generic reminder to all registered staff 1 hour before
event.
Test 3: Sent email to staff upon registration recommending they allocate
time to prepare for training.
Test 4: Sent a personalised email to individual staff members and their
managers upon registration with preparation guidance.
Test 5: Sent email to individual staff with pictorial instructions on how to
access the materials from the training platform to prepare for the training.
Test 6: Emailed registered staff highlighting that managers will be notified
of non-attendance.
"To increase the percentage of Social
Work and Social Care (NISCC
Registered) staff in the WHSCT who
register and subsequently attend online
safeguarding children training from 67%
to 85% by December 2020"
Our PDSA cycles targeted the barriers as identified in our Pareto.
The Run Chart shows the change in attendance following each test.
Making
online
learning
accessible