Child in Need Arrangements

Hillingdon’s Early Help Early Help means providing help for children and families as soon as problems start to emerge or when there is a strong likelihood that problems will emerge in the future. The Hillingdon offer of Early Help reflects the widespread recognition that it is better to identify and deal with problems early rather than to respond when difficulties have become acute and demand action by statutory or more intensive services. The Offer sets out a ‘continuum of support’ for families; offering support through separate but integrated teams which provide more intensive support to those with more complex and high levels of need and less intensive support to families whose needs are just emerging. One of the aims of this ‘continuum of support’ is to prevent children and young people from reaching the threshold for child protection whilst also ensuring that any escalating risks of harm are addressed through robust ‘step up’ arrangements.

There are a range of multi-agency services that form the Hillingdon Early Help offer.

These include:

• The Family Solutions Team incorporating the Troubled Families (TF) initiative, has responsibility for meeting the needs of identified ‘troubled families’ by providing key workers to work with those families. The Service also provides a ‘step-down’ support to families referred from the Children’s Social Care Locality Teams who no longer require an allocated social worker. These families are supported to sustain good child safety outcomes and are provided with time limited support;
• Children’s Centres form a core part of the Early Help offer in Hillingdon. The centres aim to promote the inclusion of all children, their families and carers in a safe and nurturing environment. The network of Children’s Centres provide children and families access to universal health, early education and employment services and targeted support for families with additional needs. The Children’s Centre teams include Community Outreach Workers, Family Support Workers and Family Support Assistants who all work to the Hillingdon Early Help model. Children’s Centres also enable pre-school children with additional needs and disabilities to receive extra support;
• Early Support coordinates care for disabled children from birth to age five and their families who receive four or more services from multi-disciplinary professionals in health, social care, education and the voluntary sector. As part of Early Support we operate the Portage service which is a home visiting service for families with children aged 0-4 years with a disability, additional needs or developmental delay. Portage is available for families prior to their child/ren starting nursery or school and supports parents in improving their child/ren’s confidence, communication, physical and social skills and learning and development;
• A high quality special needs nursery that has specific expertise in meeting the needs of young children with additional needs related to disabilities and/or where a child is subject to a Child Protection Plan or is a Looked After Child;
• Parenting Support delivers a menu of evidence based programmes and interventions that parents can access relevant to the different developmental stages of their children. The support starts for parents in the ante-natal period through to adolescence. Parenting support (both on a one to one basis and groups) is offered via the Children’s Centres, schools and other community venues using a range of evidence based parenting programmes;
• The Early Help Service also works with young carers and their families who meet service threshold. A young carer is a person under 18 who provides essential and on-going care and emotional support to a family member who is physically or mentally ill, disabled, or misuses substances. The young carer will receive an assessment to determine the impact of their caring responsibilities and an action plan will be agreed to reduce the impact of their caring responsibilities;
• The Early Help service allocates resources via the Early Help Panel which is a multidisciplinary panel consisting of representatives from Hillingdon Family Solutions, Hillingdon Aligned Services, Hillingdon Youth Justice Service and colleagues from the Health and Education services. The aim of the Panel is to hold robust multi agency discussions about complex families who meet the Troubled Families criteria and ensure that services / resources are targeted at the right level at the right time for Troubled Families.

Practitioners working with families can seek advice and information via a conversation with the Hillingdon Family Front Door (BFFD/MASH) Early Help Representative on 01895 556633.

More information about Early Help and our approach to responding to the needs of children and families in Hillingdon, is available from the Hillingdon Safeguarding Children Board website.

Process of making a referral

An outcome of a conversation with the BFFD/MASH Early Help Representative might result in a referral to one of the above teams. When a referral has been accepted, an Early Help Assessment is carried out. To ensure families get the right help, at the right time, and as quickly as possible a good quality EHA is required. The integrated ‘whole family’ assessment is part of the Council’s strategy to provide help to families at the earliest point of identification prior to a referral to Children’s Social Care for a Child in Need (CIN) assessment.

Providing better outcomes to children is one of Hillingdon's most important priorities and, in doing so, an important role is played by Family Network Meetings (FNM).

From the very first visit made by social workers to families they are fully committed to get naturally connected and committed networks (wider family and support people) involved around vulnerable children and families.

The FNM are participatory family conferences that focus on family and network and on building a safety plan with them. This is a successive process subject to regular reviews where families demonstrate over time that they can make children safe and improve their outcomes.

Each FNM looks at the critical issues: dynamics, triggers and stressful times that make neglect or abuse more likely and the families must either come up with or fully own all rules and plan. As a result, families feel more empowered and are more able to understand and address the concerns and requirements of the local authority.

In organising FNM, the professionals start from the premise that extensive family and community connections always exist even for most isolated families and that relatives should be located and consulted regardless of where they live. Relatives are likely to step in and provide support if they are consulted and engaged in the FNM process.

The provision of services, without family and community/network participation isolates parents and children furthering their vulnerability and compromising their health, safety and wellbeing.

With this in mind it is an expectation in Hillingdon that all cases have a FNM if appropriate to do so at the earliest opportunity.

Before establishing a FNM, as a key bottom line requirement, parents would be asked to think about and find support people every way possible because everyone can do something to help. The social worker will always search and involve the absent father’s side, will have a discussion with the parents around involving people and explore the fears that they may have. The social worker will explore the children’s perspective and explore in detail who to involve with the children, who they see and are involved with, who comes to the family, who they don’t want, what they want people to do to help them and their family. Almost every challenge a parent/family articulates regarding involving support people (such as they don’t know anyone, all the people they know are dysfunctional, they have burned out all the good people in their family, "I don’t want anyone to know that Social Care have my kids") is an opportunity and is very likely a key issue that needs to be explored with the family to build a meaningful safety plan.

The Social worker must ascertain from the family who should be the participating family/friends members and invite them to the meeting. Where possible this meeting should be held during the assessment process, before a CIN meeting takes place as potentially the support available from their network may alleviate the need for a CIN plan or reduce the input required from agencies.

In order to avoid any delays, family members and support people can participate in a FNM via phone conference, Facebook messenger, skype, whatsapp, viber, facetime, etc especially if they live abroad. The social worker will facilitate the discussions but the safety plan will belong to the family, will be owned by the family and will have clear timescales and actions, with individuals named for each action.

If it is not possible to convene the meeting before the CIN meeting then the FNM must take place within 10 working days following the CIN meeting.

The Child in Need (CIN) meetings will be arranged as appropriate but the initial meeting must take place within 10 working days of the Child and Family Assessment being completed.

At this Initial CIN meeting the Initial CIN plan will be formulated. Review CIN meetings should be held to assess, analyse and further develop the CIN plan.

These timescales are a minimum requirement and should be flexible to ensure the child’s needs are planned and met in a timely way.

Timing of CIN Visits: every 4 weeks on case by case basis in agreement with the line manager.

Timing of CIN Meetings. The first review should be held within 3 months of the initial meeting and subsequent reviews at 3 monthly intervals. These meetings must be robustly chaired to reduce the risk of drift.

Following the Child and Family Assessment completed by the Referral and Assessment Team, if the child/ren is/are found to be in need and there are additional child welfare or borderline safeguarding concerns, such as domestic abuse or neglect issues in addition to destitution, the child/ren will be made subject to a Child In Need (CIN) plan and allocated to one of the CIN/CP teams where they will be monitored according to London Safeguarding Children Procedures – Assessment Framework for Children in Need and their Families.

Visits and reviews will be carried out by the allocated social worker who will retain responsibility for implementing the NRPF/IH aspects of the case such as monitoring the family’s immigration status via 2 monthly NRPF Connect checks, monthly monitoring of subsistence payments and also monitoring accommodation provision via the 6 monthly NRPF/IH reviews.

Children who are found to be in need purely due to the risk of destitution, will not be subject to a CIN plan. They will be monitored via 3 monthly NRPF/IH home visits (if not CIN) and 6 monthly NRPF/IH reviews. The subsistence provision will be reviewed every 3 months via the recurring payments and the accommodation provision will be reviewed every 6 months in line with the NRPF/IH review.

Any child protection or safeguarding issues which arise during the course of working with a Child in Need must be responded to in line with the London Safeguarding Children Procedures.

It is an expectation and a requirement that Child in Need plans are reviewed actively and the required response for the child is provided at the right time. This relies on reviews taking place within timescales and the child/ren is/are visited, seen alone and their views heard and recorded throughout the lifetime of the plan.

The frequency of visits should be:

• Agreed with the team manager on a case-by-case basis;
• At least once every 3 weeks (save for the exceptions noted for Children with disabilities and NRPF);
• Or more frequently if indicated in the CIN plan.

Recording on LIQUIDLOGIC should follow the Child in Need workflow.

To ensure the quality of recording, the social work practitioner must check that all actions have allocated responsibilities and actions by dates. They should be mindful of the purpose of the recording and mindful of the potential audience for the recording (young people, families, other professionals).

Where it is proposed that the package of support being provided under a CIN plan should continue beyond / or has continued to 8 months the case should be identified by the line manager at 8 months and brought to the next CIN panel.

The CIN panel will be chaired by a designated Head of Service and will take place once per month. The panel membership will include health, Early Help, and Children’s Social Care. The purpose of the CIN panel is to review the plan from a multi-agency perspective, provide independent management oversight, in particular to prevent any drift in planning.

A summary report of the presenting issues should be brought to the panel by the allocated social worker (if the social worker is absent then the responsible manager should attend to present the case. It is important that the presenter has a comprehensive understanding of the case so that the panel can make informed decisions).

The panel may determine a number of outcomes as stated above under Review of CIN meeting. Recording of panel decisions.

The form used for the summary report will have a section included to record the decisions made at the panel. These will be uploaded within 5 days of the panel date by the allocated social worker. Review of CIN panel.

The panel’s effectiveness will be reviewed after 3 months of its implementation. Consideration will be given to holding the panel after 9 months of a CIN plan or ceasing the panel if it is deemed no longer necessary.

This section deals with children who are subject to Children in Need Plans and who move to another local authority. The principles apply to local authorities in the circumstances of both transferring out and receiving in Children in Need.

In a number of situations, children and their families moving to another local authority offers a positive option. However, and particularly where children and their families may have moved on more than one occasion in a short space of time, any assessment should consider whether the child is subject to trafficking or modern slavery.

• When a Child in Need moves from one local authority area to another, the Children Act 1989 is clear that the responsibility for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the child lies with the local authority where the child is to be found;
• Given the child has already been identified as having particular needs or is vulnerable in some way, or urgent consideration / assessment should be given as to the impact of the move for the child in respect of their vulnerability, for example, through changes in the protective factors, increased risk with known perpetrators or whether they might be subject to trafficking or modern slavery;
• Given the circumstances, and in line with the above, a timely response should be made with regard to levels of assessed risk;
• The parent/carer should be made aware of their responsibility to ensure the child receives appropriate education and health support in the area they plan to move to, together with any other specialist service required for the child;
• The social worker should assist and promote the family accessing relevant and appropriate services with regard to meeting the child’s needs. Any deficits in services to meet specific needs by the receiving local authority should be noted;
• The local authority Children’s Social Care Services where the child and family are moving to should be formally notified and all relevant information should be shared:
  • Social work assessment;
  • Child in Need Plan;
  • Minutes of latest Child in Need Review
  • A summary / case report.
• Parent / carer’s permission should be sought to share this information with the receiving local authority in line with Information Sharing Advice for Safeguarding Practitioners.
  
  However, the Data Protection Act should never be a barrier to ‘sharing information where the failure to do so would result in a child or vulnerable adult being placed at risk of harm’ or indeed on those occasions where seeking consent might increase the risk of harm.
  
  Otherwise, the social worker or team manager, should consider seeking advice from their Caldicott Guardian or their Legal Services;
• The social worker should ensure that other agencies involved in the Child in Need Plan are made aware and prepared to ensure that their relevant information is shared as soon as possible with their respective counterparts in the area the family have moved to, (for example school and GP records, etc.);
• The social workers and team managers of the respective authorities should ensure there is clear and good communication during any transition and any risks are clearly communicated and understood.
  
  Where possible, the social worker should seek to meet their counterpart and where geography allows, to consider a joint visit and attendance at the Child in Need Meeting, so that the issues can be fully shared. The process should reflect the family’s needs and any associated risks;
• Where there is dispute about case responsibility; delay in the receiving local authority accepting responsibility of the case, or a dispute about Children in Need thresholds, the team manager should promptly notify the Service Manager who should make a decision regarding next steps, including, where necessary, to take legal advice;
• The family should be kept informed of any respective responsibilities during a transition stage and when the receiving local authority, (where the family reside), take full responsibilities;
• Receiving local authorities should seek to convene a Child in Need Meeting within 20 working days of the family being resident in their area and include all relevant agencies and, where possible, the social worker and other specialist staff where the child and family have moved from;
• All actions, decisions and arrangements should be fully recorded on the child’s case record during this process. This should include management decisions, which should identify the rationale for any decisions made, especially where specific services cannot be provided and/or it is considered the child is no longer a Child in Need.