Structure
Plymouth City Council's Services for Children, Young People and Families is a learning organisation. The Academy of Social Work seeks to promote this learning culture throughout the Children, Young People and Families Service, where you will find at every level a passion for enabling learning and supporting the development of staff, students and allied professionals. The Academy of Social Work strives to be a centre for excellence in this regard, overseeing our aspirations with committed and qualified staff. All teaching and development staff in the Academy of Social Work are registered Social Workers, are qualified to Practice Educator Level 2 and have accreditation with the Higher Education Academy in recognition of their academic and lecturing responsibilities.
Social Work Academy Plymouth Structure
Service Areas in Children, Young People and Families Service
Plymouth Referral and Assessment Service (PRAS)
When an enquiry meets the statutory threshold for assessment of need and / or risk, this service will undertake the necessary assessments, working in partnership with children, young people and families and with other agencies who are connected. This is a short-term intervention service, which may lead to legal safeguarding intervention or onward referral to the Children’s Social Work Team for further support, assessment and activity.
Children’s Social Work Service
The Children’s Social Work Service is at the heart of co-facilitating change, with children, with young people and with families. Purposeful visiting to undertake direct work with children and their families is central to their daily work. The service engages in relationship based practice, getting to know children and helping them to increase their resilience and to feel safer.
As a longer term service area, they aim to work with children and families in all aspects of their journey. They provide stable and confident oversight and support for children in need of help and protection through working closely with our partners in health, education, the voluntary sector and legal sector. Seeing positive change for children, and being a significant part of enabling this, motivates our practitioners to commit to this rewarding area of social work practice.
Permanency
The permanency service consists of dedicated teams of social workers, personal advisors, family support and youth workers. Their work is focused on promoting positve outcomes for children and young people, who are 'looke after' and for whom the long term plan is to remain looked after by the local authority.
The teams aim to provide a therapeutic, supportive and relationship based approach to enabling children and young people to fulfil their potential and aspirations. The teams also provide support and assistance to those who leave local authority care, helping them to become independent and successful adults.
Fostering Service
The Fostering Service provides assessment for prospective foster carers, as well as dedicated support to foster carers already approved by the local authority.
Our dedicated team of foster carers offer love, support and a secure home to children and young people who, through no fault of their own, cannot live with their own families. Foster carers bring much needed stability and continuity to children's lives, offering what every child wants and needs - family life, friends, love and respect.
Foster carers work in partnership with the dedicated children's services teams at Plymouth City Council, helping children to achieve the best possible outcomes in life.
For more information on becoming a foster carer visit our Fostering web pages
In accordance with the provisions of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, all local authorities have a duty to establish and maintain an adoption service in their area, to meet the needs of children who have or may be adopted, birth families and adopted adults.
Devon County Council, Plymouth City Council, Somerset County Council and Torbay Council have delegated most of those functions to Adopt South West.
Adopt South West aim to build and strengthen families through adoption services. The agency aims to work within legislative framework, comply with the National Minimum Standards, Regulatory Requirements and best practice guidance for Adoption Services. The main objective for Adopt South West are to:
- Provide a range of quality services which can promote best outcomes for children who need adoptive families.
- Adhere to permanency planning timescales to ensure that every child who needs an adoptive family is matched as soon as possible with a family that will meet that child’s needs for stability, warmth, security, safety and belonging into adulthood and beyond.
- Ensure that every effort will be made to find an adoptive family to meet a child’s emotional and developmental needs considering their ethnicity, religion, language, culture, gender and disability, without undue delay and within the timescales laid down by Statutory Guidance.
- Ensure sufficient adopters, from diverse backgrounds are recruited and involved in a comprehensive assessment, preparation and approval process to help them understand the likely needs of children placed for adoption to enable them to offer the best possible standards of parenting, safety and protection for children in their care.
- Provide effective and efficient Adoption Panels to enable prospective adopters’ assessments and matching decisions to be progressed without delay.
- Provide a comprehensive support package to achieve stable and successful placements. • Provide an efficient and responsive assessment service for children, adopters and adopted adults in respect of adoption support services in conjunction with other agencies.
- Maintain and develop effective partnerships with the Local Authorities and other adoption agencies.
- Ensure that cost effective services are provided and commissioned which maximise available resources.
- Ensure the service works positively and respectfully with all service users and partner agencies regardless of race, colour, religion, language, culture, disability, gender, sexual orientation or age.
- Ensure the service invests in the workforce to ensure they have the right skills and capacity to deliver excellent services.
- Ensure the service will continually seek to apply best practice and innovation to ways of working. Actively listening to and learning from children, adults and staff to develop future services.
Youth Offending Service
The Youth Offending Team (YOT) deals with children and young people under the age of 18 who are either accused of, or convicted of committing a crime.
Plymouth's YOT aims to prevent children and young people, between the ages of 10 and 17 offending by working as a team made up of lots of different professionals including:
- Social Workers
- Police Officers
- Probation Officers
- Drugs and Alcohol Advisors
- Mental Health Practitioners
- Education Welfare Officers
There are a number of reasons a young person might commit a crime and these may include social and family problems, substance misuse problems, truancy or social exclusion. To tackle these and any other issues that may lead to offending behaviour, young people need support to help them make the right life choices.
The needs of each young offender are looked at by using a national assessment tool to spot specific problems and measure the risk they pose to others. It also helps choose programmes to tackle any underlying causes for behaviour with the aim of preventing offending.
The victims of offences are at the heart of the work of the YOT - to reduce the fear of crime and encourage offenders to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends for any harm caused. The role of parents and carers in preventing and reducing criminal offences is another area the YOT promotes.
Contact the Youth Offending Team and find out more about the work done and to suggest future projects.
Children’s Disability Team
The Children's Disability Team provide Social Work support and services to disabled children and young people aged 0 to 18 years old, who have a broad range of needs that impact on their ability to be equal, safe and to achieve their potential.
We recognise that families may need a little extra support from time to time and the Social Workers will work in partnership with parents, carers and young people and to offer advice, support and social work before a situation reaches crisis point. The team work with children and young people aged 0 to 18 years identified as having:
- A moderate to severe learning disability (including where the young person also has a diagnosed autism spectrum condition)
- A physical disability or sensory impairment where there is a significant impact on day to day life
- Complex health needs or long-term medical condition where there is a significant impact on day to day life
- Needs for services arising out of the child's disabilities or intrinsic condition and these needs cannot be met by universal or targeted services alone
Social workers take the lead role in co-ordinating and carrying out assessments of need and formulating care plans that are compliant with all relevant statutory requirements and department policies, standards and guidelines that promote the well-being and protection of children. One worker is specifically employed to support transitions to Adult Social Care. We assess needs and risks through the completion of recognised assessment tools in accordance with government and local guidance for Children in Need, Children and Young People in Care and Child Protection.
Where necessary the social worker will initiate appropriate statutory action to protect children at risk and they hold responsibility for undertaking statutory visits to Children and Young People in Care; those subject to a Child Protection Plan and for identifying the permanency needs of children who cannot be cared for at home
We can help children and families by:
- supporting parenting
- helping parents develop the skills and understanding to be more effective in meeting their child's needs and to keep them safe at home
- working with other teams or professionals to coordinate plans
- requesting funding for short breaks or personal care support
- arranging alternative care for children whose parents can't care for them
- reviewing complex support packages regularly to make sure support continues to be right for the changing needs of children and families
Further information on the support and services that are available for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities aged 0 to 25 years can be found in Plymouth City Councils SEND Offer and in the Short Break Offer.
Parent and Child Assessment Team
The Parent and Child Assessment Team is commissioned to undertake independent assessment of parents’ capacity to provide safe care for their children. Assessments are supportive and include education and guidance to promote positive parenting. The team consists of a team manager, assessing social worker, family support worker and administrative assistant.
A parent and child assessment is an assessed foster placement in which one or both parents and their child (and potentially siblings) up to the age of 3 years will live with foster carers in their home. The aim of the assessment is to provide a supportive environment for the parents so they can demonstrate that they can meet all of their child’s needs with a minimal requirement for support.
Participation Team
The Participation Service focuses on the engagement and involvement of young people in influencing and shaping services. The team consists of dedicated youth workers, managed by the Child and Family Principal Social Worker. The outcomes of their work are reflected in the level of participation of children and young people in a range of corporate structures.
Quality Assurance and Safeguarding Service
The Quality Assurance and Safeguarding service brings together into one service area, various quality assurance and safeguarding roles and functions. The service is responsible for the delivery of multi- agency child protection case conferences for children in need of protection, the delivery of the Independent Reviewing Officer function, statutory duties for children in care, which includes the responsibilities of the Training and Reviewing Officer for fostering.
The service delivers the function of the Local Authority Designated Officer, who is responsible for considering and responding to allegations against employees or volunteers who work with children. In addition, the service is also responsible for the operational delivery of Plymouth’s Fostering and Adoption panels.
Plymouth Out of Hours Service
Plymouth Out of Hours Service is an emergency social work team who provide social work intervention for children, young people and famlies who experience crisis at night, weekends or bank holidays, and who cannot safely wait until the next working day. They work closely with colleagues from police and the health service and can provide expert advice and intervention on any of the following issues:
- Children and young people, including relationship issues or concerns about physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect.
- Children and adults with a disability.
- Children and adults with Acute mental health problems.
- Older people at risk
- Emergency housing advice
Office hours for the Plymouth Out of Hours Service
- Monday to Thursday 5pm to 9am
- Friday 4pm to 9am on Monday morning
- 365 days per year, including all Bank Holidays
Tel: 01752 346984. All phone calls are automatically recorded in case they are required for training and support.
Targeted Support – Family Support Workers and associated staff
This service provides whole family support to families facing crisis, or considerable difficulties requiring longer term support. Workers will engage families in their homes using bespoke packages of support directed through social work plans or Early Help plans. Families are assisted to access and improve communication with other multi-agency services to ensure they are receiving all the support they are entitled to and require.
The service also provides one to one professional youth services and work, and targeted youth support to young people who have a range of support needs. Youth workers support young people and their family within social work plans or outcome based plans following Early Help Assessment. All engagement is voluntary and is carried out within the home, youth centres or community.
Family Group Conferencing and Mediation Service
A Family Group Conference (FGC) is a tool for planning and works well as an early intervention. It can also be used in Child in Need, Child Protection and when considering alternative carers for a child. The conference is a decision making meeting in which the child and the child's wider family network makes a plan about the future arrangements for the child, ensuring that the child is safe and his/her well-being is promoted.
FGCs are intended as a respectful and empowering process in which parents; children and members of the wider family are given clear information about the agency's concerns and asked to produce a plan addressing those concerns and answering specific questions to support this. The referring agency may stipulate a 'bottom line' e.g. that they will not endorse a plan where the child lives with a certain person whom they consider presents a risk to the child
The model places the child and family at the centre of the planning process and provides them with an opportunity to have their voices heard in relation to plans made for their child. There should never be a family plan and a different agency plan; just one plan developed in partnership, with family and agencies working together.
Consent
The FGC will only proceed if someone with parental responsibility (PR) agrees to the referral. This verbal consent will need to be obtained by the referrer prior to submitting the referral. The FGC Coordinator will obtain further signed consent from someone with parental responsibility to gather and share information for the purpose of the FGC and to involve the child or young person within the process.
Please note that the processes are voluntary and consent can be withdrawn at any stage throughout the process.
Limitations
- Families who refuse to consent to share information
- No family identified
- No safe adult identified within the family network
How do Family Group Conferences work?
The meeting is arranged by an independent FGC Coordinator who meets everyone first to prepare for the meeting. Social Workers and other professionals attend part of the meeting:
- explain their worries about the child and what needs to be addressed by the family in their plan. This is done at the start of the meeting (stage 1)
- agree the family's plan (provided it will keep the child safe) and confirm what help they will provide the family. This is done at the end of the meeting (stage 3)