The Maddocks Consultancy brings a wealth of experience of working in and with a range of organisations providing social and health care services for children and young people.

We are independent social work consultants who bring practical and up to date knowledge designed to help managers, policy makers and practitioners. We have a particular expertise in children's services and have undertaken wide ranging commissions. We have also worked with central government departments.

The principal partners in the Maddocks Consultancy are Peter Maddocks MA CQSW and Jane Shepherd BA (hons) CQSW. Both are qualified independent social workers registered with The General Social Care Council.

Peter Maddocks has extensive experience of managing, developing and reviewing children's services in England and Wales. He has worked on policy advice and implementation, management of change and service transistion, and service reviews and evaluations. He wrote Fostering for the Future.

Peter Maddocks has worked with many social services on a range of projects ranging from strategic and service evaluations through to management reviews and complaint investigations. He works regularly with government organisations. He has also worked voluntary and independant organisations.

Peter Maddocks has worked extensively in child protection, fostering and adoption services. This includes undertaking agency and overview reviews with Local Safeguarding Children Boards, independent chairing of an adoption panel, independent chairing of a fostering panel, and work as a professional advisor to a number of public organisations. He has undertaken Joint Area Reviews in a number of areas in England and Wales. Peter and Jane Shepherd work on commissioning and contracting for children's services.

Jane Shepherd has considerable experience of joint commissioning across health and social care services. She has worked with many of the Special Educational Needs (SEN) Regional Partnerships developing regional commissioning arrangements. Jane has a particular interest in the area of out-of-authority placements and has worked with both the West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside SEN Regional Partnerships researching this area.

Jane Shepherd has also worked with individual councils to develop protocol and panel arrangements across health, education and social care agencies to improve arrangements for out-of-authority placements. The focus was on decision making, to ensure the quality of care and to ensure placements are value for money.

Jane Shepherd developed a Quality Assurance Framework for the North East Special Educational Needs SEN Regional Partnership. The outcome was a set of materials to enable local authorities to monitor and benchmark services regardless of whether they are provided internally or commissioned and provided by the independent or voluntary sector providers. Available from the North East SEN Regional Partnership known as Facilitating Inclusion North East (FINE).

We welcome inquiries and can provide no obligation meetings and project proposals on request.

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