Family safeguarding
- Introduction
- What is different about the Family Safeguarding Model?
- Meet our team
- What families can expect from us
- Our partners
- Information for professionals
- Reporting concerns
Introduction
Our Family Safeguarding Model helps keep children safe with their families and gives them the support they need.
We are working in a different way with families across Swindon to help keep children safe at home and families together.
We recognise that families often face challenges that make parenting difficult, which is why support from social workers is sometimes needed. However, we also believe that every family has strengths.
Our work helps families to recognise and build upon these strengths, enabling them to make positive changes that improve their lives and the lives of their children, so they can remain together.
Our way of working is called the Family Safeguarding Model.
What is different about the Family Safeguarding Model?
The Family Safeguarding Model brings together a team of social workers and adult practitioners who work together with families to offer help and support across a range of challenges.
By working as one team of social workers and adult practitioners, we can spend more time working with families to provide them with help when they need it.
Meet our team
Our Family Safeguarding teams are made up of:
- Social workers
- Helping to keep children safe within their families
- Domestic abuse workers
- Supporting families who have experienced or are experiencing domestic abuse, helping them understand its impact on themselves and their children. They also work with individuals who commit acts of domestic abuse.
- Recovery workers
- Providing support for families struggling with alcohol or drug-related problems
- Psychologists and assistant psychologists
- Helping parents understand their thoughts and emotions and the impact their mental health challenges might be having on their children
What families can expect from us
We make the following promises to the families we work with:
- We always want the best for children
- Our team members will be kind and compassionate and will work with you to understand your family's needs
- We will listen to you and work together with you
- We will do all we can to keep families together, where it is safe to do so
- We will always work as one team for our families, so you do not have to repeat yourself to different people in different organisations
- Our team will support the challenges your family are experiencing and will be there for you when you need them
- We will recognise what you and your family do well, and we will help you build on those strengths and support you to succeed
How we work with our families
We use 'motivational interviewing', a technique designed to empower and engage parents in making the positive changes necessary to improve both their children's lives and their own wellbeing.
Our partners
Our Family Safeguarding Model is successful because of the way we work in partnership with other organisations and local communities across Swindon.
For more information, our printable Family Safeguarding information leaflet (PDF) for parents provides further details on our approach.
Information for professionals
The Family Safeguarding Model brings together a team of social workers and adult practitioners who work together as one team with a family to offer help and support for a range of problems they might be experiencing, helping them identify their strengths and supporting them to make lasting, positive change.
Together, we use our combined knowledge and expertise to assess the needs of the whole family, providing tailored services and support.
By working in this way, we can best help parents achieve sustained change and reduce the risk of children coming into care.
How we work with our families
The Family Safeguarding Model brings together a team of different social workers and adult practitioners who work with a family on the following:
- Multi-disciplinary teams
- Our teams have a range of specialists with extensive knowledge, who work together to support families and parents experiencing mental health issues, drug and alcohol use, or domestic abuse.
- Motivational interviewing (MI)
- A strengths-based conversational approach to counselling that encourages families to improve their children’s welfare by enhancing their motivation to change. The key elements of MI are developing a partnership between the team members and parents, which draws out the parents’ thoughts and ideas about change.
- The Family Safeguarding Workbook and Family Programme
- The Family Safeguarding Workbook guides our social work practice with families and makes it more purposeful, as well as providing space for all practitioners involved with the family to contribute to analysis, planning and sharing of decision-making.
- Electronic workbooks
- Our method of recording case notes aims to improve information sharing and reduces the amount of time practitioners spend on bureaucracy and reporting.
- Group Case Supervision (GCS)
- Monthly supervision meetings are held for each case, allowing practitioners to review progress, discuss outcomes and agree next steps.
- Eight-module Intervention Programme and Parenting Assessment
- The intervention programme provides a framework for practitioners’ direct work with children and families through Family Safeguarding. The parenting assessment enables practitioners to capture the work completed through the intervention programme and to document the outcomes achieved.
Using this approach, our teams help families to:
- identify strengths and any necessary lifestyle changes
- access support with those experiencing mental health issues, limited parenting skills, drug and alcohol use, or domestic abuse
- listen to children and families views to improve how we work
- receive the time and support they need to make lasting changes
The key intervention models will be:
- parenting programmes tailored for children of different age groups
- treatment programmes for perpetrators of domestic abuse, including understanding its impact on children
- Support programmes for victims of domestic abuse
- programmes to promote children’s resilience
- drug and alcohol recovery programmes
What difference is Family Safeguarding making?
- Families are offered the right support at the right time, to help them to reduce the risks to their children and enable children to stay at home where it is safe to do so
- Schools and local community partners are playing a key role in identifying and supporting families who need early help
- We are focused on increasing the engagement of families with professionals and information sharing between professionals is being strengthened all the time
- Health and education outcomes for children are improving
- The model frees up social workers' time, enabling them to spend more direct time working with families and less time on administration
- High-quality services continue to be provided at a reduced financial cost to the Council and its partners and better outcomes are being achieved for children
In all our work, the following principles underpin our approach:
- We always want what is best for the child
- We will always work in partnership with the family
- We always listen carefully and work to understand each family better
- We always aim to meet the needs of our families by giving them the right help from the right people first time
Outcomes we want to achieve for our families
We have introduced Family Safeguarding in a similar way to the Hertfordshire service model to achieve the same outcomes for our families. The model uses evidence-based interventions that contribute to improved levels of engagement and safeguarding with parents and children. The model is also used by several other local authorities, including Bracknell Forest, Luton, Peterborough and West Berkshire Council.
National evaluations have shown the outcomes for families and children have improved significantly, and include:
- more children being kept safely with their families
- fewer children coming into care
- fewer children needing child protection plans
- fewer repeat domestic abuse call outs to police
The full evaluation reports are available to download:
- Forrester, D., Lynch, A., Bostock, L., Newlands, F., Preston, B. and Cary, A., 2017
- Rodger, J., Allan, T. and Elliott, S., 2020
Reporting concerns
To report a concern about a child, visit Children and Families, Contact Swindon.