Project helps families overcome crises

Project
Catch

Purpose
To support families in crisis and prevent young people from entering the care system unnecessarily

Funding
The project was initially allocated £250,000 by Buckinghamshire County Council to cover set-up and running ?costs for six months. Funding has since been taken from the overall children’s services budget

Background
Over the past few years Buckinghamshire has seen increasing numbers of young people aged 11 to 17 coming into care because of a crisis at home. Taking a young person into care was often the only option without a social worker available to make a thorough assessment.

But that is not always the best solution, explains Terri Cartwright, head of assessment and protection for the south of the county. “Often the crisis is manageable if you have the ability to go and respond immediately,” she says. “We wanted to avoid taking young people into care for just a few days. Once they’re in the system it can be difficult to get them out.” The answer was a new service designed to deal with exactly these types of situations, providing the flexibility to respond “at the point of need”.

Action
The Catch (Child and Teenage Community Help) service was launched in September 2011. The team – based in Chesham – includes a manager, deputy, social work assistants and a part-time business support worker and serves the whole county. They take referrals from Buckinghamshire’s referral and assessment teams or the out-of-hours duty team and, as well as working 8am to 7pm, Monday to Friday, have an on-call system that means they are on hand to respond to problems up to 10pm at night and at weekends and bank holidays. This means workers can make an early assessment, start initial mediation and make appropriate referrals without delay.

Critical to the success of the project has been the support of the Buckinghamshire Community Childminders’ Network, which agreed to provide a seven-day-a-week rota of “Catch carers” able to look after a young person at any time, including Christmas Day. “Often a young person and their family are having problems and just need some time out,” says Cartwright.

Young people go to the Catch carer with the agreement of their parent or carer. Other keys to success include joint training of the team alongside Catch carers and youth workers.

The scheme is not just about sorting out crises – once the team has been called in they will work with an array of other agencies, including the local child and adolescent mental health team, youth offending service, education and housing providers to put together ongoing support.

Outcome
The latest management report shows that by March this year the service had received 105 referrals. The majority – 66 per cent – involved young people aged 14 to 16. Fifty-six per cent of referrals related to young men and 44 per cent to young women.

Of the 67 per cent of cases that were closed, 42 per cent required “minimum Catch involvement” following further assessment, either because they did not meet the criteria for the service or because young people were signposted to other services and agencies; 42 per cent needed short-term intervention of up to two months; and 16 per cent required medium-term support of more than two months but less than six.

Of the 67 cases closed, only two young people had to be formally accommodated in care – or three per cent.

Of the 105 referrals, managers estimate that 36 would have required a period of accommodation if the Catch team had not intervened. Twenty-seven would have required a short-term placement for a few days and nine would have needed medium-term placements.

The Catch team made 13 placements with Catch carers – most for less than three days. Three required longer-term placements.

They have recently expanded the team from three to five social work assistants. Buckinghamshire is looking into developing a similar service for under-11s.

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