CMI Level 5 and Level 7 · EPA Live Assessment
Assessment Day Hub
David Agyei · Shropshire Council
Everything you need in one place. Open your seven prep files and four submitted documents from Quick Launch, then work through the day.
Assessment: 18 June 2026, 14:00
Quick Launch (Section 1) opens each reference file in a new tab. Keep this hub open behind them so you can return to it between sections.
Golden Thread (Section 2) is the one sentence that anchors every answer. Return to it whenever you feel a question pulling you away from the core narrative.
Theory Names (Section 3) gives you the seven frameworks to name. Use these whenever the assessor asks which models or frameworks you used.
Governance Gaps (Section 4) holds your prepared answers for the two most dangerous open questions: the strategic owner TBC and the referral position (13 outstanding for Shropshire Mental Health as of 2 June; confirm on 18 June).
Distinction Reminders (Section 5) tells you the exact verbal behaviour that separates Distinction from Pass. Read it before you start.
Before the day, open the Assessment Day Checklist to track prep progress.
Drill - Mock Q and A Practice
Proof - Evidence Locator
Proof - Star Achievements
Proof - Use of Theories
Ref - Jargon and Theories
Ref - Memory Jog and Distinction
Ref - Witness Testimonies
Submitted Documents
Project Proposal (4,000 words)
Project Tracker
Submitted Governance Documents
Submitted Presentation
Before the session starts: open all seven prep links above and the four submitted document links below so they are ready in separate tabs. Test Google Meet screen sharing with your slides before 14:00.
Your anchor sentence
"The SWANN Phase 2 project directly addresses Shropshire Council's financial recovery mandate by building the data infrastructure needed to demonstrate cost avoidance on escalations: a quantifiable return on investment in early intervention that was previously impossible to evidence."
£121m financial emergency → Phase 1 failed to create data infrastructure → Phase 2 designed to fix governance before technology → £390,000
| Figure | What it means | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 12.5 to 14 FTE | Social worker equivalent of that meeting cost. Makes the human cost tangible. | As-Is Meetings Analysis Report |
| 15 coachees | West Midlands Coaching Pool. 2 returned from burnout. 6 received promotions. | Coaching Testimonials 2025 |
| 31 → 13 referrals | 31 outstanding (27 May); 13 remaining for Shropshire Mental Health as of 2 June. Live Well Shropshire cleared. 10 June update: confirmed not requiring further action from Customer Services; 13 pending Shropshire Mental Health provider responses to residents. Confirm final count on 18 June. | SWANN updates 2 June; RAID log; Kate Hobbs |
| 73+ staff | Number engaged in the FFP Comms Update (As-Is Meetings Mapping) | Charlotte Saywell testimony; ELD K5.1 |
| £121m | Financial emergency declared by Shropshire Council, 2024. Context for the whole project. | Executive Summary; Proposal Section 1 |
| £390k | Illustrative annual cost avoidance from SWANN Phase 2. Calculation: 200 referrals/yr x 20% deflection = 40 escalations avoided. 40 x £750 assessment cost = £30k; 24 care packages avoided x £15k = £360k. Total: £390k. All inputs are ADASS/PSSRU proxies, labelled as such, not confirmed figures. | Cost Avoidance v0.1; Proposal Section 6 |
| £770k to £851k | Annual meeting costs identified across Children's Services in the As-Is Meetings Mapping project. | FFP Comms Update (Evidence 9); ELD K1.3 |
The question: "Which models or frameworks informed your approach?" Do not answer with tools (RAID log, sprint board). Answer with named theories. Then critique them.
| Decision Area | Theory to Name | One-line limitation to add |
|---|---|---|
| Change management | Lewin (unfreeze/change/refreeze) and Kotter (creating urgency, guiding coalition) | Both assume organisational control; real change in multi-agency context is messier than either model suggests. |
| Coaching | GROW model; non-directive, person-centred approach | Non-directive only works when coachee has sufficient readiness; had to shift to more directive scaffolding in burnout cases. |
| Financial analysis | Proxy costing with ADASS/PSSRU benchmarks | National averages, not Shropshire-specific; the model is illustrative until Phase 2 creates actuals. |
| Leadership | Situational Leadership (Hersey and Blanchard) | Assumes leader has authority to direct; in cross-functional work without line authority, requires influence to substitute for direction. |
| Options appraisal | Cost-benefit analysis with do-nothing baseline (Green Book) | Proportionate not exhaustive; no risk-adjusted cost estimates for each option. |
| Project management | Agile/Scrum: empirical process control (inspect and adapt) | Public sector procurement cycles do not align with sprint cadence; required adaptation not pure Scrum. |
| Stakeholder management | Mendelow's Power/Interest Matrix | Does not capture emotional investment or relationship history; supplemented with trust-building. |
Full detail cards with prepared sentences are in the Proof - Use of Theories file.
If asked "take me through your slide on the three decisions": use this table. Decision made, alternative rejected, why. That structure is itself a distinction answer.
| Decision area | Choice made | Alternative rejected | Why this choice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery method | Agile/sprint approach | Waterfall/traditional project plan | Requirements were emergent: the team could not specify the data governance model until they started mapping it. Agile allowed adaptation. Waterfall would have locked in the wrong solution early. |
| Referral channel | Microsoft Dynamics portal | Standalone form or spreadsheet | Dynamics integrates with existing council infrastructure so data flows rather than being re-entered. A standalone form would have replicated the Phase 1 problem: data captured but not connected to anything trackable. |
| Workstream structure | Concurrent workstreams | Sequential (one after another) | Sequential would have added 6 to 8 weeks. Concurrent required dependency management but delivered faster and allowed early learning from each stream to inform the others. |
Risk: The SWANN SPoR ToR v1.0 lists the Strategic Owner as TBC with a target confirmation date of 30 May 2026. The assessor has read this document. This question will be asked.
The strategic owner is shown as to be confirmed in the Terms of Reference, against a target date, and I want to be clear that this was a governance decision rather than an oversight. I documented it as a named risk and I built the interim arrangement into the ToR itself: until the strategic owner is formally confirmed, escalation runs through Lisa Middleton to her Head of Service, and Lisa holds commissioner-level accountability throughout. The project is never without a decision route. Phase 1 showed me exactly what happens when governance gaps are left unnamed, so here I made the gap visible and routed it rather than managing around it. The only item still to close is the formal sign-off, and that conversation is already scheduled.
Risk: Confirmed at the 27 May SWANN partnership meeting. An assessor who has read the full portfolio may ask what is happening to those families right now.
At the 27 May partnership meeting I surfaced the outstanding referrals and the absence of a provider SLA. I raised it deliberately, because these are residents who have already reached out once, so a second failure carries both a human and a reputational cost. The root cause was a mailbox encryption issue, which has since been fixed through the new Swan mailbox. At the most recent workshop the remaining cases sat with Shropshire Mental Health responding to residents directly, confirmed as not dependent on Customer Services or on my team to action. So the position is owned and contained: I raised it, the cause is fixed, and the residual sits with the provider. What Phase 2 does is remove the cause permanently. Referrals currently arrive through inconsistent channels with no tracking; once the portal is live, response times become measurable and accountable, which is the exact gap that allowed this to happen.
The single most important distinction behaviour
After every answer, add one evaluative sentence: "What this showed me was..." or "The limitation of that approach was..." or "If I were doing this again, the thing I would change is..." That sentence is what separates a reflective practitioner from a competent one.
| When asked about... | Pass does this | Distinction does this |
|---|---|---|
| A decision | Describes what was decided and why | Names the criteria used, describes the alternatives rejected, identifies the cost accepted |
| A gap or weakness | Acknowledges it honestly | Acknowledges it, explains why it was accepted, describes the mitigation, names the residual risk |
| A piece of evidence | Describes what the document shows | Tells the story: context, action, outcome, learning |
| A theory or model | Names it and describes use | Names it, describes use, then critiques its limitation in this specific context |
| Own development | Identifies a learning or gap | Identifies the learning, describes how practice changed, provides external evidence the change was observable |
| Stakeholder challenge | Describes the stakeholder and the challenge | Describes the power dynamic, the emotional component, the approach and why that approach, the outcome, and what would be done differently |
When asked about coaching (K4.2, S4.2): 15 coachees, West Midlands Coaching Pool, 5+ years voluntary, 2 returned from burnout, 6 promotions. External validation from Shanda Reid (independent of Shropshire Council). Level 5 coaching qualification. CPD: systemic coaching, wellbeing, career transitions. Theory used: GROW model, non-directive, person-centred.
FFP Comms Update (Evidence 9): Director Shaw committed to reviewing his own meeting attendance. HWBB adopted the methodology cross-organisationally. Charlotte Saywell: "Great piece of work David." No line authority over Director, AD or Programme Manager. Data did the influencing, not seniority.