Family advice and assistance

Services for Children and Young People have an active family support service for children, young people and their families who need practical help advice and support to keep their children in their families safely.

There are three family support teams:

• The Rapid Response team is based at Ballard House alongside the Advice and Assessment service. This team works closely with the Advice and Assessment service and at their request will work with families in emergency situations and at very short notice to provide practical support, assessment and advice at times of crisis to try and prevent family breakdown.
• Ringmore Way and North Plymouth teams work with families in a more planned way. They do a lot of work with families whose children are subject of a child protection plan or families where children are in care and the plan is to try and return them home to their parents.

Who can receive family support services?

All children and young people who have a social worker can receive this service.

What help is available?

The help we provide is tailor-made to meet the needs of your family so before work begins we will discuss with your social worker and you about what the best form of help is.

All the teams work with children and young people of all ages from 0 to 18. They offer a range of different services, dependant on what the needs are. They can work individually with children and young people, with the parents or together as a family.

All the support workers will use a range of tools to help you. These tools have all been tested to make sure that they are effective.

We work with families for 12 weeks but we will review progress at six weeks and again at 12 weeks.