There are several service areas within Children and Families:

Family Support and Care Planning which includes:

The Referral and Assessment Team

The team provides a single point of access to all children’s social care services. Based at Gateshead Civic Centre, it performs a signposting and assessment service, including referrals to the Children with Disabilities team. The team works closely with the Police Child Protection Unit (to be co-located in the future) and child protection nurses, helping to develop closer working practices around safeguarding children and young people.

The team is at the forefront of:

• Solution Focused Therapy, respecting the unique strengths and resources of every individual, couple and family
• Signs of safety approach to child protection

Safeguarding and Care Planning Teams

Our service provides a child focused system that supports the promotion of the concept of one family, one social worker, but balances that with the advantages, which, specialisms can bring.

The service is divided into two safeguarding and permanence care planning teams, staffed by those who undertake child protection work and work with looked after children through to permanency decisions, including court proceedings up to the final hearing.

The two Safeguarding and Care Planning teams work across the borough of Gateshead, working with children and families who have been assessed by the Referral and Assessment Team as being in need. The teams work together on a medium to long term basis with families:

• to support family life
• to reduce social exclusion
• to give every child the opportunity of a happy, healthy and successful life
• to promote safeguarding

The teams carry out intensive work arranged through either care plans or child protection plans to support and promote the welfare of children and young people.

Family Support Service

The Family Support Service works primarily with families of children under 11 years in need of targeted services. Alongside social workers, the service undertakes assessments and offers support to children subject to Child Protection Plans. Three teams are included:

• The Family Centre Service
• The Sponsored Child Care Service
• The Contact Service

The Family Centres aim to empower parents to have more insight into their own and their children's needs, helping them improve parenting skills, to be able to care for their children within a safer and happier environment. There are six Family Centres across Gateshead, providing high quality services ranging from assessments of parenting and child development, home support, contact and parenting programmes.

The Sponsored Childcare Service aims to support the development of children and young people through providing appropriate and relevant respite childcare as part of a package to meet individual needs. It is recognised that day care such as Sponsored Childminders and quality Nursery provision can provide an important form of support for vulnerable children and families.

The Contact Service delivers quality supervised contact for looked after children where the local authority is involved in Court proceedings. Contact Officers help children and family members build and sustain relationships, enabling children to maintain contact with people who are important to them.

Our Supporting Families workers continue to work with children (from 8 upwards), supporting families to prevent admission to care. They are based within the two Safeguarding and Care Planning teams and work across teams, where needed.

Children with Disabilities and Out of Hours Service

The Children with Disabilities Team

The team provides social work support and access to services for children and young people with complex disabilities and their families. Services are also commissioned from a range of independent providers. Those services received are based on an assessment of need that helps social work staff to reach decisions about what services are to be provided. A referral to the Disabled Children team can be made by anyone, including families and professionals such as GPs, Health Visitors, schools and voluntary organisations.

The outcome of an assessment will be shared with the family who will be advised what level of service can be offered and allocated a Lead Professional. If the child’s needs do not meet the criteria for the Disabled Children Social Work team but support is required, the family may be referred to the Referral and Assessment Team, the long-term Safeguarding and Care Planning teams or signposted to other appropriate services.

The Out of Hours team

The Emergency Duty Team (EDT) is the council’s out of hours social work service for anyone experiencing difficulties at night, weekend and bank holidays. It operates 365 days a year. The team is available to help with personal and family problems that reach crisis point at these times. Team members will endeavour to sort things out over the phone, although they will visit if they think help is required, which cannot be resolved over the phone.

The team will:

• Provide information and advice to help
• If needed, help clients to get in touch with other organisations
• Carry out home visits where appropriate

Grove House

Grove House provides short break (respite) accommodation for 6 young people with physical complex disabilities between the ages of 8 and 18.

The philosophy of Grove House is one of openness and empowerment and staff actively encourage and seek the views of children and young people in decisions that affect their care.

Aiming High for Disabled Children

The programme will run until March 2011, aiming to help disabled children and their families get the support they need to live ordinary family lives. It provides more choice and flexibility in how they access services including:

• Short Breaks – increasing the quality and quantity of short breaks for disabled children and their families. Gateshead was chosen as a “Pathfinder” for short breaks, meaning that we started to transform our services a year earlier than most other areas. In partnership with families, we have developed a mix of specialist and inclusive services, such as holiday schemes, residential breaks, one to one support and culturally specific provision. We have also made physical changes to settings to ensure all disabled young people can access short breaks.
• Individual Budgets – increasing families’ choice and control over the support and services they receive. We are currently piloting individual budgets until March 2011, after which, individual budgets could become part of an ongoing “menu of services” available to disabled children and young people.
• Transition support – improving and co-ordinating services for disabled young people and transition into adult life. This involves providing more community support for 14-25 year olds.

Integrated Looked After Children’s Service

The Integrated LAC Service provides a range of support services to young people who are looked after long-term. It includes:

Looked After Children’s Team

The Looked After Children’s team works with children up to the age of 15. It is made up of social workers and support staff who work with Looked After Children to co-ordinate their care plans, ensure all their needs are being met and that their placements continue to be appropriate. The team also facilitates access to additional services if the children need them.

Social Work Therapy

The Social Work therapists form part of the Looked After Children’s Team but provide services to all Looked After Children and Young People and to children who are adopted or in adoptive placements. The therapists provide targeted, direct work with looked after children and young people who have been traumatised by abuse and neglect and require extra emotional support. They also work with children who are not looked after (and/or their carer), but who are experiencing difficulties linked to the child’s experience of sexual abuse. The therapy provided is tailored to the needs of individual children and can involve counselling, play therapy and using creative arts as ways of expressing and addressing experiences, feelings and behaviour.

Looked After Young People’s Team

The Looked After Young People’s Team works with Looked After Young People aged 15 and over, until the point that they no longer need or wish to have contact with the Children and Families Service. Young People are entitled to continue to receive support until they are 21 or up to 24 if they are in full time education.

A team of social workers, independent advisors and support workers work with Looked After Young People to develop their personal pathway plans from the age of 15, to help them develop longer term plans for their future and their transition into independence. Independent Advisors work with young people who are Leaving Care and are aged 18 and over to provide them with ongoing support and advice as they transition into independence. They support Looked After Young People to identify the right accommodation options once they are 18 and work out when they are ready to move on and live on their own.

The Integrated LAC Service also works closely with and is co-located with the Looked After Health team (comprising designated doctor, nurse and clinical psychologist) to meet their statutory duty to ensure each looked after child or young person has an initial health assessment on entering care. It also works closely with the REALAC team (Raising the Educational Achievement of Looked After Children). This multi-disciplinary team takes strategic and operational responsibility for the educational needs of looked after children.

Residential Units

There are two children’s homes in Gateshead. All homes aim to help young people develop and mature to:

• gain maximum life chance benefits from educational opportunities, health and social care
• promote independence
• achieve their full potential in all aspects of their lives

All homes have highly experienced and well qualified staff teams who work to improve young people’s lives as part of a strategic approach and provide more targeted services for those with additional needs.

Edenview is a Children’s Home for five young people aged between 11 and 16 years at placement. Staff work to prepare the residents to return home, move to an alternative family placement, or into their own accommodation when reaching the age to do so.

Blaydon Children’s Home provides planned long term care for five young people, aged between 12 and 16 at the time of their admission and who have been assessed as having their needs best met within a residential resource.

Adoption and Fostering

Our Fostering Service aims to provide high quality family-based care for children and young people who are unable to live within their own homes or for whom short-term breaks are needed to maintain them in their own homes.

We provide quality support, supervision and training to all our foster carers. Our service is measured by a range of objectives: placement stability; achieving best outcomes for children, including supporting children to achieve their educational potential; and supporting foster carers to achieve all fostering competencies in their care of children.

Our Springboard Foster Care pilot project is proving to be a real success. It offers intensive multi-disciplinary wrap-around support for looked after young people with complex and challenging needs. It offers children and young people in our care the intensive support and help they need to turn their lives around. It aims to bring positive change to key areas of a young person’s life through an individually tailored programme. The team includes psychologists, social workers, therapists and youth and education workers. Foster carers are a central part of the treatment team; they care for one child at a time and have 24-hour support.

Adoption Team

The primary responsibility of the team is to provide a comprehensive range of pre and post adoption services to children, young people and families. This includes recruitment, preparation and assessment of adopters (including non-agency and inter-country adoptions), family finding for children with a plan of adoption and adoption support to all children and families involved in adoption, including adopters, children, adoptees and birth families; birth records counselling and support for adult adoptees; support to maintain contact where appropriate and agreed between adopted children and their birth relatives.

Safeguarding Children Unit

The team’s core business is to chair child protection conferences and reviews of looked after children, including children with disabilities who have periods of respite care away from home and chairing annual foster care reviews. It includes promoting the involvement of children and families in the conference and review process, making sure their views are fully represented in planning and decision making.

In addition, Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) chair secure accommodation reviews, foster carer reviews and private fostering placements. IROs also undertake Regulation 33 visits and provide advice and consultation. Quality standards and auditing are important components of the role, including advising on planning and decision making.

The Child Death Review Coordinator post for South of Tyne and Wearside is also based in the Safeguarding Children Unit to co-ordinate the work of the Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) and Local Review process for Gateshead, Sunderland and South Tyneside.

The Manager Safeguarding – Education is also based in the Safeguarding Children Unit, as lead manager for child protection/safeguarding in relation to education settings and education support services and assist in the management and supervision of the administrative support within the Safeguarding Children Unit.

The unit is also responsible for coordinating the work of the Local Safeguarding Children Board, developing the annual LSCB Business Plan and providing advice and consultation to the LSCB on child protection matters and co-ordinating cross boundary child protection issues to ensure that inter-agency procedures are met.

Youth Offending

The service includes the statutory function of the Youth Offending Team (YOT), with the clear aim to prevent offending/re-offending, a key performance target. Work is based on risk assessment of individual cases from Final Warning stage through to Court Orders. This work is time-limited, highly structured, often intensive and underpinned by legislation and national standards.

The YOT also provides appropriate adult services to young people who have been arrested and require police interview under PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act) legislation. A bail service is also provided. Where appropriate, support is given to the young people to ensure they attend court and avoid offending whilst on bail.

Business Support

The Business Support Team provides direct and targeted support to social work teams across five sites based at Gateshead Civic Centre, Prince Consort Road, Blaydon Office, Young People’s Support Centre and Tyne View.

Members of the team undertake the following tasks:

• Financial support with regular weekly payments to young people who are care leavers and to Gateshead’s foster carers
• Revenue monitoring with strong links to colleagues in Finance
• Reception, telephone answering, data entry, stock control, archiving and word processing
• Specialised support to the Fostering and Adoption Teams
• Minute taking

Four co-ordinators each line manage a Business Support Team, with the Operational Support Officer having overall responsibility for business support across the five sites.