Children’s Social Care services can be challenging, stressful and emotionally taxing places to work. Turnover rates and working lifespans within this profession are markedly shorter than other comparable careers, including teachers, doctors and nurses.

Cardiff University (CASCADE) is conducting a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of Schwartz Rounds within 11 Local Authorities (LAs) in England. Schwartz Rounds is a wellbeing intervention that aims to bolster and support the mental health and psychological wellbeing of multidisciplinary staff, usually in health-care settings. This intervention, delivered with the support of the Point of Care Foundation, can be delivered face-to-face or virtually. It provides staff with an open forum, in which they are invited to share stories, experience, and reflections about the challenges of their work.

Schwartz Rounds will be delivered and evaluated in the following LAs: Bath and North East Somerset Council, Derby City Council, Leicester City Council, London Borough of Enfield, London Borough of Haringey, Liverpool City Council, Nottinghamshire County Council, Swindon Borough Council, Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council, Warwickshire County Council, West Sussex County Council.

Staff at each participating site will be allocated to either the intervention group, in which participants will attend these rounds, or to the waiting-list control group, in which participants will be asked not to attend the rounds, and will continue with ‘business as usual’ support and supervision.

A linear regression model will be used to analyse the main outcomes of the trial. The primary outcome is staff’s psychological wellbeing, and one of the secondary outcomes is the number of sick days taken. Both outcomes are from self-reported survey measures. The impact evaluation is supported through a mixed-methods implementation, a process evaluation and a cost evaluation.

We anticipate the final report of this trial to be published by the end of June 2021.