About family safeguarding
How our Family Safeguarding Model helps keep children safe with their families and gives them the support they need.
On this page:
- Introduction
- What's different about the Family Safeguarding Model?
- Meet our team
- What families can expect from us
- Our partners
- Information for professionals
Introduction
We are working in a different way with families across Swindon, helping to keep children safely at home and families together.
We know that families face challenges that make parenting even more difficult, which is often why families need support from social workers. However, we believe that every family has strengths.
The work that we do with families helps them to understand and build on those strengths and to make positive changes to improve their lives, and the lives of their children, so that they can stay together.
Our way of working is called the Family Safeguarding Model.
What’s different about the Family Safeguarding Model?
Our Family Safeguarding Model brings together one team of social workers and adult practitioners who all work together with a family to offer help and support for a wide range of challenges.
By working in this way, 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 - who help keep children safe with their families
- domestic abuse workers - they work with families who have experienced or are experiencing domestic abuse to help them understand its impact on themselves and their children. Our domestic abuse workers also work with those committing acts of domestic abuse.
- recovery workers - who work with families when they want support with alcohol or drug problems
- psychologists and assistant psychologists - who support parents in understanding 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 very 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 don’t 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 support families using a technique called Motivational Interviewing. This is designed to empower and engage parents to make the positive changes needed to improve the lives of their children 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.
Our printable leaflet for parents gives more information about our Family Safeguarding Model.
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 combine our knowledge and expertise to assess the needs of the whole family, providing services and support to meet those needs.
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:
- in multi-disciplinary teams – As outlined, 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.
- using 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.
- using 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.
- using a new electronic workbook – Our new method of recording case notes aims to improve information-sharing and reduces the amount of time practitioners spend on bureaucracy and reporting.
- through Group Case Supervision (GCS) – Monthly supervision meetings are held for each case, allowing practitioners to review progress, discuss outcomes and agree next steps.
- through an 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 Family Safeguarding Model teams work with families to:
- identify their strengths, and any lifestyle changes that need to be made
- provide 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
- spend the time needed with each family so that they can make lasting changes
The members of the team work together to offer families the right support, at the right time, from the right people, helping them to stay together.
The key intervention models will be:
- parenting programmes tailored to children of different age groups
- treatment programmes for perpetrators of domestic abuse (including impact on children)
- programmes for victims of domestic abuse (including impact on children)
- 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, in order to help them to reduce the risks to their children and enable children to stay at home where it’s 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’s 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 very 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 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: Family safeguarding Hertfordshire: evaluation report
- Rodger, J., Allan, T. and Elliott, S., 2020: Family safeguarding. Evaluation report. Department for Education
In all our work, these principles underpin our approach:
- We always want what’s 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
Reporting concerns
To report a concern about a child, visit our multi agency safeguarding hub.