Charity urges social care role for children's centres

The charity is urging all political parties to support its call to turn children’s centres into Children and Family Hubs, extending their reach to all children and young people under 19 and co-ordinating a much wider range of services.

The hubs should be put on a statutory footing, akin to that of schools, and councils should be required to have one in each deprived community, 4Children said.

The expanded remit of hubs would include being able to deliver and co-ordinate children’s social care services, including child protection services, for all vulnerable families from a single location.

They would also incorporate GP, health visitor and employment support services.

4Children says co-location and better co-ordination of services under the hub model would reduce the possibility of children at risk falling off the radar of safeguarding agencies and help reduce the pressure on local authority children’s social care departments by identifying and addressing problems earlier.

A 4Children report on the plans published today, also recommends the introduction of a new social care family worker role to work in hubs assessing children’s support needs and ensuring appropriate provision is put in place.

The workers would be largely drawn from non-graduate social work assistants, and be able to manage less complex cases enabling social workers to focus on those children most in need.

4Children chief executive Anne Longfield said: “Serious case review after review highlights the damage that is done when services don’t work together and when professionals are locked in their own silos. This lack of collaboration and lack of information sharing is putting vulnerable children at increased risk of serious harm.

“That’s why 4Children is proposing a new approach to co-ordinate local services through children and family hubs to be built upon the tried and tested network of children’s centres as trusted and integrated centres of the community.

“This ambitious new approach has the potential to put children and family services at the heart of every community, co-ordinating services around the needs of local families, from antenatal to social care, working together to join up support and making the best use of the investment from the public purse.”