Our Family Safeguarding Teams are a pioneering model of social work which consist of multi-agency teams that work with Child Protection and Child in Need cases and conduct the majority of our care proceedings. These multi-disciplinary teams consist of professionals in children’s and adult social work, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, substance misuse and mental health who work together to tackle the root causes of risk in families.
Our multi-disciplinary family safeguarding teams will work with families to address the difficulties they may be experiencing. We aim to motivate and support them to identify for themselves the changes needed to keep their children safe from harm. The overall aim is to bring about long term change within families which is driven by the parents themselves and is therefore likely to be more sustainable.
The Assessment Service undertakes assessments of children and young people in line with requirements from the Children Act 1989 to establish their health and development needs. This includes speaking with key professionals who know the child and family such as schools, police, probation, health (GP, Health Visitor etc.).
The Joint Child Protection Investigation Team (JCPIT) works primarily on cases where from the outset, it appears that a crime may have been committed against a child by their parent/carer and therefore requires investigating by Police and Social Care jointly.
In Hertfordshire, the Children’s Services Front Door Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) provides a single point of contact for all families, residents, and professionals to request help and support for children and their families or report safeguarding concerns for a child.
The Front Door teams are made up of committed, dedicated and flexible Children’s Social Care and partnership staff, working within two Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) pods and one Early Help Triage pod, who always strive to provide an excellent service to children and families. The Front Door Service is an office-based Service, operating from our Stevenage offices. Currently our teams are hybrid working, with 60 % of the week based in the office. This is subject to review
Our Looked After Children teams provide social work services to children aged 18 and under who are looked after by Hertfordshire Children's Services.
The Service provides a range of support for young people to help them come to terms with what has happened in their lives; provide them with a permanent home and help them prepare for work and independence. The service is fully committed to working in partnership with young people; their parents and other professionals to provide and develop services to ensure their health needs are attended to and help them catch up with their school work. We also ensure that we work closely with our Children In Care Council who are a group of young people who have experienced being in care and help us to continually improve the way we promote the best interests of children.
Our Care Leaver Team help young people who are transitioning from being Children Looked After to becoming Care Leavers. They need support, advice, and guidance to navigate their way into adulthood successfully.
As part of our role as corporate parents and our ongoing commitment to our Care Leavers, we're expanding our Care Leaver service. This includes opening a new Care Leaver team, hiring more Leaving Care Personal Advisers, and introducing Consultant Social Workers into these teams. This allows us to reduce caseloads, giving our staff more time to work directly with their care leavers and meet their needs.
We recognise that young people leaving care have complex needs and require extra support. Positive relationships with their personal advisors are crucial in their lives.
These teams support Separated Migrant Children and care leavers from point of their entry into care through to independence. The workers within these teams have specialist skills and knowledge in respect of the cultural needs of Separated Migrant Children and responding to the significant trauma and loss that these young people have experienced. The Teams are also skilled in navigating the Immigration system and completing age assessments.
The Specialist Adolescent Service Hertfordshire integrates Youth Justice, Social Care and Prevention Services and works closely with partners to support families where there are concerns of extra familial harm, risk of entry into care and or offending behaviour.
The service is part of the wider Children Services and aims to improve the lives of young people and their families where there are extra familial concerns, risk of or offending behaviour; risk of a child entering into care.
0-25 Together is our Social Work and Adult Nursing Service that intervenes and supports children with complex disabilities, life limiting or lifelong support needs.
We support families, children, young people and young adults who have a range of complex needs.
Approval of family and friends foster carers, completion of Special Guardianship Order assessments, statutory role for Private Fostering and all matters relating to the approval of carers at Fostering and Adoption Panel.
The teams provide foster carer induction training using the Skills to Foster material and post approval training to supplement what is provided by Learning and Development. The Fostering Teams provide fostering placements for Hertfordshire’s children looked after.
The Adoption Service seeks to provide permanent families for children and young people who cannot live with their birth families. The county has 2 Adoption Assessment Teams (East and West) assessing potential families, providing adoption placements and supporting these families prior to adoption order. There is an additional dedicated Family Finding Team and an Adoption Support Team which provides support for birth families, adoptive families, children who are adopted and adult adoptees.