Welcome to the first Compass Points of 2025.
We start off the year with the announcement of our new Values Champions. We have six winners across the four awards this year – we just couldn’t separate some of the nominations they were that brilliant. And to have had nearly 50 nominations across all awards is a reflection of our amazing workforce and how highly people value their colleagues. And, we have our first winners in the new leadership category and the three teams categories in our 2025 One Compass Awards.
It’s wonderful to read about their individual journeys and reflect on the impact they have had on the lives of children, young people and families.
This month, we also warmly welcomed over 70 new colleagues to Compass. After local inductions, our new colleagues – mainly Wave 12 MHST staff in Birmingham and Derbyshire – spent a day at a lovely hotel in the West Midlands getting to know each other as well as SLT and SOM members.
The focus was very much on our vision, mission, and values and how these are embedded in everything we do. I am always so grateful to spend time with people getting to know them and humbled to listen to their personal journeys. It blows my mind thinking about the sheer breadth and depth of knowledge, skills, specialisms and lived experience that we have as one big Compass team.
One Compass Awards 2025
Winners announced! And new logos revealed
Our new Values Champions
Also, nominated…
Being Solution Focused: Kim Pearson; Sally Wild; Hazel Broadfield; Ash Robinson. Consistent and Reliable Approach: Zowie Paton; Christine Pavolvic; Lauren Asker-Smith; Courtney Askey; Debs Wheeler; Helen Scouller; Alice Sotirchos; Jonny Bulmer; Rachel Zilate. Integrity: Claire Hitchen; Jamee Leigh Benson; Tracy Allard; Sarah Turner; Hayley Snee; Michelle Allen. Valuing Each Individual: Andrea Leach; Chelsea Edgar; Leanne Weavill; Sarah Brewster.
Leader of the Year
Also nominated…
Leader of the Year: Karen Cornick; Jude Ashworth; Michelle Eyre; Laura Angel; Vicky Triffit; Sue King
Team awards
Participation – Specialist Team, Derby Changing Lives
Over the last 18 months, Compass Changing Lives’ Specialist team has developed and implemented several impactful initiatives that improve the lives of children, young people, and families.
By marketing the brand through social media platforms and newsletters, they have expanded Compass’s reach, making services more accessible by raising awareness and celebrating the work that we do within Changing Lives. We believe this proactive engagement reduces stigma around mental health and encourages open conversations in the community.
A welcome pack was developed in collaboration with children and young people from Derbyshire and Derby City. This provides critical information and reassurance to families accessing the service, ensuring that they feel supported and informed from the start, thereby improving the quality and effectiveness of interventions within locality teams.
The team are increasing participation within the service using feedback at the end of an intervention or workshop which enables children and parent/carers to share their experiences, providing valuable insights into what worked well and what we can do differently.
Finally, the team have promoted the parent pathway within the service, increasing parental support through the Triple P offer. This additional support empowers parents/carers, and develop new strategies to support their children’s well-being.
Our current initiative is our new logo design competition which has been open to all children in Derby and Derbyshire – watch this pace for our re-branding launch in the New Year.
Collectively, these strategies align with Compass’s goals by adding value to our service, and fostering a positive, inclusive experience for families.
Outstanding Performance – Compass Phoenix
COMPASS Phoenix have faced a challenging 18 months due to significant demand, this demand resulted in significantly increased waiting lists and waiting times. The team have worked incredibly hard to develop and implement an action plan focussed on reducing these waits and in September 2024 we saw the lowest waits in service in over 18 months. For the first time in 18 months the team achieved their KPIs around wait times and ultimately, this means that children and young people are no longer waiting too long to access support.
To achieve this, the team have worked incredibly hard, they have developed and rolled out 3 high quality group programmes at significant pace and each member of the time has contributed by offering additional assessment duty slots each week to support when demand has been high.
The service now has a highly effective assessment rota and group programme, the team spent the summer of 2024 recording all group sessions onto the ‘Go To’ platform to ensure CYP who miss sessions can access the same content in order to catch up and not miss out.
Alongside all of the work that has gone in to reducing wait times and wait lists, the team have also improved the quality of their delivery, with the team achieving no less than GOOD in all audits this year. Despite continued high levels of referral, the service are now maintaining these lower waits, alongside continuing to develop and roll out an increasing offer of intervention for CYP.
Innovation – Compass Go, Wave 9 SEN Team
Our team learnt quickly that innovation plays a crucial role in creating effective, personalised care. Traditional approaches proved to not be sufficient to address the unique challenges the children faced, we found as a team just how essential it was to think outside the box and develop creative strategies that respond to the children’s diverse needs.
As a team, we all agreed how taking a holistic and flexible approach to treatment was vital. This meant blending traditional therapies, like cognitive behavioural therapy, with alternative methods such as art, creative therapy and adapted therapy.
These creative interventions resonated with the young people who found conventional methods challenging. Multi-sensory strategies like the creative art which engaged different senses, was particularly effective for individuals with sensory processing issues or communication difficulties.
The team works in not only all the SEN Schools but also all of the alternative provisions in our borough meaning we provide full borough coverage. Evidence wise, we may not be able to provide the numbers other teams achieve, instead our evidence is found in the successful packages of support provided to children who had been refused support by other services, including other mental health services due to their complexities. Without the innovation from this team they would have achieved the changes they made and in many cases would not have received any support.
Also nominated…
Innovation: Specialist Team, Compass Be; Chorley, Compass Bloom; The Jeff Project. Outstanding Performance: Compass Be MHST; Compass Bloom; South Derbyshire Team – Derby and Derbyshire MHST; Compass GO; . Participation: Compass GO.
Please note, while working on Compass servers, you must now sign in to YouTube to view YouTube videos. Download a guide here on how to do that, if you haven’t already 🙂 There are videos in the following story…
Keeping our values central with our new starters
A four-day induction for over 70 new Compass employees was all about instilling the values […] Continue reading
Powering your development at work
Compass Operational Workforce Development Plan
by Jan Smith, Operations Director
In the 2023, Compass – Your Voice staff survey, 19% of colleagues disagreed with the statement that Compass offered good career opportunities.
This was one of the lowest rates of agreement in the survey and something Compass Board and Senior Leadership Team wanted to do something proactive about. The end of 2024 was a good opportunity to look back over the last 12 months and take stock of what has been achieved by our dedicated and hard working colleagues.
Clinical training for 32 colleagues
As a provider of both clinical and non-clinical well-being, prevention and health promotion interventions, our organisation is made up of a truly diverse skill mix of people and many are supported by Compass to undertake formal professional training in line with nationally mandated models of care. This year, to date we have supported a total of 32 colleagues to successfully complete clinical training across the organisation.
In addition, Compass Board have committed dedicated investment over the three years 2024 – 2027 for the sole purpose of supporting the professional development of Compass practitioners and increasing capacity in teams to deliver services to children and young people flexibly. This creates time for practitioners to engage in professional development without impacting on the quality or timeliness of services to children, young people and families. This plan is now in full swing, delivering:
- Two fixed term remote practitioners delivering direct services to children and young people to build capacity in teams with high demand.
- An additional two wellbeing practitioners working in the Compass Flex Team in a fully remote model deployed to create capacity in areas of greatest need.
- Funding for professional training for 12 Compass colleagues (2024/25) plus funding for backfill to minimise the impact of time for training in services.
Nearly £1m committed
Over the three-year life of the workforce development programme, a total of £962,000 has so far been committed to support a further 33 Compass colleagues to contribute to the development and retention of a professional workforce, with either additional training or creating capacity to support others to attend professional qualification training without impacting on the delivery of services to CYPF – we are excited to watch as more of our colleagues take the next step in their careers with us.
120 promotions
It is fantastic to look back on 2024 and see that 120 Compass colleagues – around 30% of the workforce – achieved an internal promotion either as a result of undertaking further study or as a result of developing skills from experience and endeavour.
Congratulations to our 2024 Graduates!
This year saw a number of Compass Changing Lives’ staff graduate from their courses at Derby University to become fully qualified Supervising Practitioners, Educational Mental Health Practitioners, and HI-CBT practitioners. Continue reading
New Senior Mental Health Lead forums
By Carla Hickman, Data and Admin Team Leader, Compass Bloom
Colleagues at Compass Bloom have been supporting schools to address mental health needs, through the creation and development of local Senior Mental Health Lead (SMHL) forums.
Bringing together the SMHLs across Central and West Lancashire has encouraged the sharing of best practice, training and local updates.
Within these forums, SMHLs have the opportunity to share with peers. this includes sharing effective strategies and the themes they are seeing in their schools. The agendas for the SMHL forums are agreed to meet changing needs and to be responsive to what the SMHLs, schools and CYPFs are concerned about.
The SMHL Forums in Lancashire are held termly by Hannah, Mia, and Fran; they have been well-received and well-attended.
‘‘It’s been wonderful to see all the Senior Mental Health Leads come together and really utilize the forum and safe space.’’ – Mia, Team Leader, Chorley.
The SMHL Forums align with Compass Bloom’s commitment to evidence-based interventions, supporting whole-school approaches and providing timely advice. These forums ensure Compass Bloom remains responsive and encourages continuous improvement.
‘‘Working together to make a difference, one term at a time’’ – Fran, Team Leader for South Ribble.
For more information or to register your interest in being part of the SMHL forums, email Compass Bloom at Compassbloom@compass-uk.org
Changing Lives welcomes Centres of Excellence in Derby City and Erewash
Changing Lives is expanding once again, welcoming two more Centres of Excellence in Derby City and Erewash, further increasing the mental health support they can offer the children and young people of Derbyshire. Continue reading
Refer a friend for a cash reward
Clare refered her friend Triona to Compass
Know someone who you know would be just right for Compass – and for whom that Compass would be just right for them?
Well, refer that friend!
Clare Smith, a Training & Consultation Worker at Compass Phoenix, refered her old university pal, Triona Tootle to one of our open vacancies – as People Advisor.
Clare said “I knew she’d be brilliant”.
Triona applied, went throguh the selection provess and was offered the job. Clare got the £1,000 cash reward, with the grateful thanks of the People Team – and although she didn’t have to, she split it with her old friend.
Staff are able to get up to £1,000 reward for referring a friend in bands A-H jobs, once the new employee has successfuly completed their probabitonary period.
Triona said: “Clare and I have been friends since we went to university together in Lancaster, meeting in Sept. 1998… Ssshhh don’t count how many years ago that was!
“I was looking for an opportunity in Human Resources and Clare mentioned that there was a role going in her new workplace.
“I hadn’t seen it advertised and so had a look and it definitely looked like a fantastic opportunity. I applied, mentioned Clare’s name in the application and was delighted to be successful! I love that we get to work in the office together once every few weeks too.”
The two went to a “brilliant” gig together in Manchester and enjoyed a slap up meal.
Triona added: “If you know someone suitable for the Refer a Friend opportunity its worth going for it… I’m 10 months in, working for Compass and loving it.
And Clare said: “Triona and I met at Uni. We’ve been great friends ever since so when a vacancy for a HR role at Compass came up, I immediately thought of her.
“She’d been looking for a similar role and I knew she’d be brilliant and fit in with the ethos of the charity.
“Not surprisingly, she got the job and six months later, I received a very welcome bonus of £1,000 from the Refer a Friend scheme, in my October salary.
“Of course, I split this with Triona and we treated ourselves to gig tickets and a fancy hotel in Manchester.
“While we don’t work in the same team at Compass, we are both based in York so try to meet in HO when we can and enjoy a catch up over a coffee from the local café and plan our next gig/night out.
“I now keep my eyes peeled for other jobs I think my friends or family would be interested in – just in case!”
Do you have any colleagues in other organisations who may be interested in our roles, we have recently changed our Refer a Friend Policy and we have increased the amounts on offer, so for Band A-C the amount is increasing to £500 (from £250) and for Bands D-H the amount is changing to £1000 (from £350). Scan the QR code for the policy.
The last end of year pictures
Compass Go team day
Emily Kolberg, Supervising Practitioner, Compass GO…
At Compass GO… we celebrated with an end of year team day. There were a range of fun activities (including drinking hot chocolate and eating mince pies) but the highlight was the creation of a new hat for Father Christmas. The team took this very seriously, bringing a range of resources from home over the last few weeks and really going big with their creations…
Compass Shine’s end of year event
Spectacular
I want to express my grateful thanks to Siobhan Kearney in the Flex Team who has taken a lead in organising and delivering a spectacularly successful induction for services in the Midlands.
Siobhan, for your first induction in your new role, you have been amazing; from setting up equipment to delivering presentations to judging Task Master. The planning and delivery was testimony to your organisational skill, determination and ability to keep smiling through the challenges. Well done and see you at the next one 🙂 – Jan Smith, Operations Director
Going to miss you
I just want to thank everyone on the Chesterfield and Bolsover team. You are such a hard-working and dedicated team. I have learnt so much and I am going to miss you all. – Donna Viner, EMHP, Compass Changing Lives MHST
Smooth transition
Thanks to Laura Taplin, our team leader in Wave 12, and all the newbies. Thanks for making this transition smooth and welcoming. You are all fantastic and can’t wait for the year ahead. 🤩 – Lindsay Jones, TEMHP, Birmingham Wave 12
Massive thank you
A massive thank you to Mia and Hazel from Compass Bloom for all their guidance and support throughout my EMHP training year.
You’ve both been an incredible team leader and supervisor and you certainly helped me get through that last challenging bit!
Thank you also to all the amazing team at Compass Bloom for all the encouragement and words of wisdom you’ve shared along the way, it really is much appreciated! Donna 😊 – Donna McKenzie, TEMHP, Compass Bloom.
Amazing Person
I would like to say Thankyou to Adele Normington. Adele has been the best supervisor to me in the time we have worked together, and I can’t thank her enough for her support, she has made me feel so comfortable, motivated and confident in the work I do and has always believed in me. Adele is the most amazing person and iv enjoyed working together. I have learnt so much and I wish her the best of luck in her new role, and I know she will be amazing. – Chelsea Edgar, EMHP, Compass Bloom
A great job
I would like to say a huge thankyou to Arjan Bains and Sharon Colphon who together worked tirelessly with their teams over the Christmas period to set up our new office in Birmingham ready for wave 12 inductions. Great job – really appreciated all the work you did. – Sue Berry, Assistant Director – Operations
Remarkable results
To my incredible team leaders,
I wanted to express my sincere gratitude for your unwavering dedication and hard work over the past few months since I joined Compass Birmingham. Your passion, resilience, and ability to overcome challenges have been truly humbling.
Thanks to your leadership, we have achieved remarkable results:
- 97% recruitment across both waves: a testament to your tireless efforts in attracting and securing top talent.
- Strong staff retention: demonstrating a positive and supportive work environment.
- A positive and solution-focused culture: where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute.
- Reaching unprecedented numbers of children and young people: exceeding expectations and making a real difference in their lives.
- Consistently exceeding contractual targets: a clear reflection of the team’s commitment and high performance.
These achievements are a direct result of your exceptional leadership and the dedication of your teams. I am incredibly proud to work alongside you all.
Thank you for your continued hard work and commitment to making a positive impact on the lives of children and young people in Birmingham. – Dean Morrall, Service Managee, Birmingham MHST
A huge support
I want to say thank you to Hayley Spies and Rachel Haynes for being a huge support in helping me with my university studies. I also want to thank the wave 10 team for being wonderful people to work with – we can do this! – Jess Heseltine, TEMHP, Compass Birmingham Wave 10
Act of selflessness
During our Birmingham MHST Wave 12 Induction I noticed one of the new staff tidy up rubbish that a colleague had left behind by accident.
I feel this small act of selflessness reflected our Compass values really well. Her name is Celeste Nembhard 😊David Guard, MHST Team Leader, Birmingham Wave 12
Above and beyond
Can I add a huge thanks to the whole of MHST in Barnsley in their efforts with focussing on appointments but especially to Sally, James, Kim, Lisa A and Tom for working above and beyond to support colleagues in other localities. You are stars! – Louise Doughty, Team Lead, Compass Be
Valuable asset
I would like to offer a warm welcome to the newest member of our team Andrew.
Already you are such a valuable asset to the T&C Team and I can’t wait to see what we achieve over the next year. – Pip Nix, Training & Consultation, Compass Phoenix
Safeguarding – National Policy Briefing
by Jan Smith, Operations Director
This month’s safeguarding feature focusses on findings outlined in the Child Safeguarding Review Panel Annual Report 2023-24 published in December 2024. The report comes at a time when as a nation we are reflecting on historical and recent high profile child abuse cases and the Government response.
The focus of this report is on serious incidents where children have died or suffered serious harm. It seeks to understand the patterns in practice from 330 rapid reviews with incidents falling between April 2023 and March 2024, and 82 Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews, the full report is available @ Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel: annual report 2023 to 2024 – GOV.UK some of the findings most relevant to our work at Compass are given below.
Under 1s still experienced the most harm, representing over a third of all incidents. However, this year, children aged 16 to 17 made up the second largest age group. There remained a fairly even split between boys (55%) and girls (45%), with observed variation when accounting for age.
The review found that children with a mixed/multiple ethnic background and Black/African/Caribbean/Black British children were over-represented in the reviews, while children from Asian/ Asian British ethnicities or other ethnic groups were under-represented.
Looking at the cause of death the report identified suicide as the second most common (16%) with girls experiencing higher rates of suicide than boys (21% versus 12%).
Extrafamilial child homicide and extrafamilial fatal assaults were the most likely causes of deaths of boys (21%) compared to just one girl.
Overall, the most common cause of serious harm was intrafamilial non-fatal assault (30%), followed by non-fatal neglect (14%). Girls were more likely to suffer both intrafamilial and extrafamilial child sexual abuse combined than boys (32% versus 4%)
In almost 9 out of 10 incidents, the family of the child in focus was known to children’s social care (CSC), either as an open case or was previously known to CSC with over a quarter of children on, or previously on, a child protection plan. Around a sixth of children were classed as ‘looked after’ either at the time of the incident or previously, and 21% were subject to care orders or care proceedings.
Over a fifth of children were recorded as having a mental health condition, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. In the 20 reviews where the diagnosed mental health condition was thought to be linked to the incident, 70% of children died, all of whom completed suicide.
In a quarter of incidents, at least one parent or relevant adult was reported to have either a physical, mental health-related, learning or developmental disability, a substantial increase from the previous year. In just over half of the incidents, at least one parent was reported to have one or more mental health conditions, and in 43% of reviews, there was a parent with an addiction to or misuse of alcohol and/ or substances.
The concern for children in our communities is growing and the Government have in November and December set out two policy proposals and began the process of preparing legislative change to improve safeguards for children and young people.
Enactment of new legal frameworks takes time but if you want to read more about the plans please follow the links below.
‘Keeping children safe, helping families thrive’ published in November which outlines the government’s commitment to keeping families together and children safe Keeping children safe, helping families thrive – GOV.UK.
And the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill – Parliamentary Bills – UK Parliament. Expanding on the principles of keeping Children safe, helping families thrive and introducing new regulation and standards in schools. If you have concerns about a child, young person or vulnerable adult please discuss them with your local Designated Safeguarding Lead or contact Compass Designated Safeguarding Officer jan.smith@compass-uk.org
New and Payroll System
New app for booking leave and expenses
by Donna Wilson, People Business Partner
Some of you may already know that over the last few months we’ve been looking for a new integrated HR and Payroll system. We’re excited to say that we have found one – it’s called Health Box HR (HBHR), and at the time of writing, we are in the early stages of our implementation plan (HBHR will replace our current people system MyCompass / CIPHR).
The new people system will be implemented in a phased approach with more functionality becoming available over time for all colleagues to make life easier (including online expenses, use of an app to access the system such as booking annual leave etc). There will also be improved management information for managers and easier/ automated management processes. Overall HBHR will be a more user friendly system to work with for all colleagues.
It’s a really exciting project that will be keeping us particularly busy in the first few months of the New Year, and we’re aiming to be live in May/June (possibly earlier) for our first phase. Before then there’s a lot of work to be done involving members of the People Team and Payroll, as well as the Data Intelligence and Insights Team.
Our first phase is Core HR and Payroll, so basically replicating the functionality we currently have in CIPHR but linking this directly to payroll.
We’ll be keeping all of you up to date with regular communications and we will be asking for some of you to get involved in the project with user feedback and testing before we Go Live.
Restorative Supervisors’ training available
by Sue Cody, Compass Quality Assurance Lead
We have 14 restorative supervisor facilitator face to face training places available for staff to book on in June. This would be great training for staff who have an interest in staff well-being and fostering good working relationships.
For more information contact me at sue.cody@compass-uk.org If you are interested, please ask your line manager in the first instance for approval. Following this please do get in touch with @Training email address to book a place.
Safeguarding L3 – Remote 9.30am-4.30pm
- Tuesday 18th February
- Thursday 20th March
BLS Training face to face – North – venue tbc
Wednesday 22nd January – 10am-11.30am, 1.30pm-3pm
BLS Training face to face – Midlands – venue tbc
Weds 19th February – 10am-11.30am, 1.30pm-3pm
BLS Training – face to face – location & venue tbc
Tuesday 11th March 10am-11.30am, 1.30pm-3pm
Please email Training to book
SLT and Board renew business plan
As part of our usual cycle of business, SLT and Board came together for a day in January to review our strategic priorities and plans for Compass. This was a great opportunity to reflect on the progress made against our current business plan particularly the development of our Compass culture and to explore the potential risks, challenges, and opportunities Compass faces inside and outside of the organisation. It was a really productive day with lots of thoughtful discussions between non executive directors and SLT members.
The focus of our planning day was to make sure we had properly considered our current position and the external environment in terms of future Government health and social care priorities, future funding and the contractual pressures on organisations and commissioned services to demonstrate high impact, value for money and efficiency in service provision.
Two year plan
The discussion resulted in a new two year business plan that will build on our achievements of the last couple of years.
Our new business plan and our priorities officially begin in April at the start of the new financial year and we will cascade them shortly to all Compass colleagues so that everyone can contribute to our achievement of them via the revised objective setting cycle for appraisal (more info to follow on this).
Know our Senior Leadership
Click pic for more info.
People Director.
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Assistant Director (Operations). Click pic for more info.
2025 Awareness Calendar
Compass head office staff have produced a new Awareness Calendar for use in services. The Calendar is a live document. The EDI Thematic Working Group will agree more key dates and events in their upcoming meetings, which they will support organisation-wide.
See the latest Calendar for 2025 here.
U:\Staff Updates\Awareness Calendar and newsletter
Contacting your People Team
General People Team queries: peopleteam@compass-uk.org
Recruitment and onboarding queries: recruitment@compass-uk.org
Training queries: training@compass-uk.org
Compass Points email address.
You can get in touch with Compass Points via our email address. It’s compasspoints@compass-uk.org.
If you want to say thank you please remember to start the subject line with Just Say Thanks
Tell us your news…
Next deadline for Compass Points is Friday, 21st Feb, 2025.
Please note that sometimes, we may not publish all stories in the month they are submitted. Because of the volume of Say Thanks messages, we ask that they’re as brief as possible. We may need to edit any submitted content.
Please send all submissions, including thank yous, to compasspoints@compass-uk.org“