8am
It's a bright summer's morning and Ann-Marie Kirk, a family support worker at the Instant Response Team (IRT) arrives at a terraced house in north Liverpool. The family is struggling to cope. Kirk is here to help them with breakfast, check on the children's routine and take them to school.
8.45am
The first member of the team arrives at the office, opens the shutters, unlocks the door and makes a cup of tea. The team is based at Liverpool City Council's children's services building in Croxteth, a suburb of Liverpool, that became front-page news in August 2007 when 11-year-old Rhys Jones was shot dead by gang members in a case of mistaken identity. Gangs are still a problem in the area and some of the team's sister services work with those. But the IRT is focused squarely on breakdown within the family. They aim to provide intensive support to families in crisis where children are at risk of going into care. "We try to do it as a whole-family approach because you can't just fix one person, you've got to fix the whole family," says Julie Rogers the team's manager.
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