Can early intervention reduce demand for children’s social care?

This is one of the key questions that will be debated by politicians and children’s services practitioners at the Early Intervention Foundation's first national conference on 12th February.

A timely discussion to have following the publication of the ADCS’s Safeguarding Pressures Phase 4 report, which revealed that 2.3 million initial contacts were made to children’s social care in 2013/14 – a 65 per cent increase on 2007/08.

The aim of a successful early help strategy would naturally be to have fewer families ever reaching crisis point. But when they do, the level of support will be stepped up to avert the need for any children to be moved into the care system.

For those children living in the most challenging circumstances, entering care – even as a temporary measure – may be the only way to ensure their safety. Early intervention has an equally important role to play here, in ensuring they leave care at an appropriate time equipped with the tools they need to achieve their goals and lead a happy and fulfilling life.

Against the backdrop of rising demand for children’s social care, is it time to look at oiling the wheels of this stepping up and stepping down process?

Putting information in the hands of social workers

Assessing children at risk is an important part of a social worker’s job. But I sometimes hear of how time consuming and frustrating it can be to do this from scratch. There is a lot of information that needs to be found to help practitioners ensure the right services are put in place for children and families.

A child’s school history, details of a hospital visit or information from a local drug team could be important nuggets of information to a social worker. Often, this kind of data could already be somewhere in the authority’s computer system too.

If all authorised staff involved in putting an appropriate care plan together could add to or view a more complete record of a child’s life in one place, there would be far less time spent keying-in or searching for important data, and less chance of something being missed.

When a child’s life moves on

Sometimes, circumstances change. A child previously in crisis could settle in with a foster family, for example, and may no longer be regarded as at risk. The level of support they need might then be adjusted. Their case could become the responsibility of a locality team, for example.

If the child has a history of family abuse or they have been involved in drug-taking in the past, however, the local teams tasked with keeping them safe need to know this. It could be critical to keeping their lives on track.

Information can not only help inform decisions on the most effective early help schemes to prevent more children from entering the care system in the first place. It can also ensure the most vulnerable children get the support they need, through each step of their journey – either into or out of care.