Safeguarding

Children's safeguarding is one of four services within the Children and Young People's Services, and Gill Rigg is its interim head of service.

Each head of service has published a plan for their service. The Safeguarding service plan (also known as a head of service plan) describes the service at the start of the financial year, sets out the priorities for the year ahead and explains how these will be achieved.

A number of teams with different responsibilities make up the service. They are:

Duty and assessment team
This team is the first point of contact for families who are seeking social work support. Social workers from the team collect information from the family themselves and from agencies that may be involved with them. This is to build up a picture of issues and to help make a plan for assisting the family. The team shares the plan with the family and, where relevant, other agencies (we seek parental permission for this first). The plan is then either successfully completed or, if there is a need for long-term work, the team passes it to another social work team.

Planned intervention social work team
This team provides support to children and families who need more extensive support. This may be because of complex difficulties where help might come from several agencies and needs co-ordination and joint planning. It might involve children and families who are in the Family Courts process. Or those where child protection plans have been drawn up. Or any other factors that mean there will be social work involvement for a long period of time.

Social work permanency team
Although it is the council's policy to keep children within their own families wherever possible, a small number of children will be unable to live with their own parents. It is the job of the permanency team to find substitute families and, very rarely, residential placements which will meet the needs of those children. Nearly always this will mean placing them with their extended family members or with foster or adoptive parents who can continue to give them a family environment in which to grow up. Even in these circumstances, most children will continue to have contact with their birth families and the permanency team will manage and assist that contact.

Leaving care team
This team works with young people who have been in the care system and who are either preparing to or who have actually left their care placements and need support until they are completely independent. Mostly this will be in supported lodgings or in independent accommodation with additional help, training and advice being given from the leaving care team. The team gives particular attention to ensure that these young people have the best access to additional educational, training and employment opportunities so that they can reach their full potential.

Disabled children’s team
This team supports disabled children and their families who may well be facing a wide range of difficulties – not least because of their specific education, health and social needs. The support the team offers might sometimes take the form of short-break care but mostly it involves practical and emotional support for the children and their families in their own homes. There are particular issues for those young people who will need continuing assistance into adulthood, and the team offers expertise in planning for the transition. This ranges from services for young people to those for adults with disabilities. Securing the correct educational, training, employment and housing support is crucial.

Fostering team
The role of the fostering team is to recruit, train and support carers who have put themselves forward to look after children who cannot live with their own families. This will include families who have been recruited to foster children on either a short-term or long-term basis, and some extended family members who respond to the needs of children in their wider families who are unable to live with their parents.

Adoption team
In circumstances where it is clear that children will never return to live with their own families, the adoption service exists to identify people who will provide permanent family care through the adoption process. This could be through decisions made by the Family Court but the service also extends to supporting children and adopters after placement and to supporting the natural parents who might have had to relinquish the care of their children.

Residential care
The residential service in Warrington is a small one as we prefer to seek an alternative family children who cannot live with their own parents. Sometimes, however, their needs are so complex that they will require at least a short period of residential care. This allows us to offer a consistent pattern of care through a trained and expert staff group. There are two residential establishments in Warrington; one is a short-break facility for disabled children who may have planned breaks from their own family to enable their families to continue caring for children on a long-term basis. The second residential home is for children with complex needs who need a sustained period of care and treatment (usually lasting around one year) before being able to resume family life. Both residential units are within the borough to allow continuity of schooling, social and other links, and to make sure that the residents are not uprooted from everything that is familiar to them.

Warrington safeguarding children team
This team is responsible for organising and co-ordinating the work of all children's services which are concerned with the safety of children. Its activities include running the local Children's Safeguarding Board and its sub-groups; overseeing the review process for children who are described as 'looked after' by the local authority – in other words, in care – and formulating plans for those children who need child protection services.

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