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Children's social care support can provide help to children and their parents if the child:
A social care professional can provide practical advice and information that helps the family. They might:
You can find help for you and your family through our locality teams without going through social care support. This is where professionals come together to work with and support you and your family.
Call our Children's Advice and Duty service to ask for support.
Other people may also suggest a referral or may refer your child to social care, with your permission, including:
You can also refer your child yourself.
The team will ask you about the difficulty you're having and how it's affecting your child and family. They'll offer immediate advice about which services might be able to help you.
In some cases, a social worker will need to support you and other times they'll do an assessment so that we can look at what you child and family needs.
If your child has a disability the team will refer you to our children who are disabled team who may:
Find out more on our children who are disabled webpage.
An assessment is a way of finding out about your child, you and your family. It also identifies the support that you may need.
A social worker completes the assessment. The assessment involves collecting information about your child and family.
We may ask other professionals who know you and your child well for information about your child and family. This may include:
The assessment needs to be carried out within 45 days from the point of referral.
The social worker will agree a plan of action with your help. This may be:
If the outcome of the assessment says it's necessary, the social worker will arrange a family meeting which includes:
Everyone involved with your family agrees a child in need plan which gives details of:
If your child has had support from children's social care workers, they may be able to get support from adult social care when they turn 18.
Our preparing for adulthood page explains what happens during the move to adult services.