CYSCP

Speaking with children, listening to what they say, observing their behaviour and working closely with families and the people who know them well when deciding how to support is at the heart of what we do. We use specific tools such as: My 3 Houses, Mind of My of My Own, Words and Pictures to engage with children to bring the child’s voice into the assessment and develop understanding.

In addition, read more about working with parents and carers as well as find out more about information sharing.

My 3 Houses

My 3 Houses takes the three key assessment questions – what are we worried about, what’s working well and what needs to happen – and places them in three houses to make the issues more accessible for the child.

• house 1 - the house of worries
• house 2 - the house of good things
• house 3 - the house of dreams

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Words and Pictures Explanation

Words and Pictures is an agreed story, prepared in partnership with the family, to enable the parents to explain to their child why they are working with us, what happened and what will change in the future. Words and Pictures is also a way of explaining the situation to other professionals and the wider safety network.

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Working with parents and carers

As outlined in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 (.pdf) parents and carers need to understand what is happening, what they can expect from the help and support provided, what is expected of them and be supported to say what they think. We know that working collaboratively with parents and carers means they have the best chance of making changes.

Signs of Safety is a partnership approach which gives us a shared language which is clear and understandable to families. The approach enables use to drive the principles for working with parents and carers as set out in the statutory guidance:

1. Effective partnership working with parents and carers happens when practitioners build strong, positive, trusting, and co-operative relationships.
2. Verbal and non-verbal communication should be respectful, non-blaming, clear, inclusive, and adapted to parents and carers needs. Practitioners should ensure that all materials provided to children, parents, carers, and families are jargon free, developmentally appropriate and in a format that is easily understood.
3. Practitioners empower parents and carers to participate in decision-making to help, support and protect children by creating a culture of “no surprises”, helping parents and carers to understand what the issues are and how these impact on the child, what decisions could be made, what changes need to be made, why and how, timescales and possible outcomes and signposting to support.
4. Practitioners involve parents, carers, families, and local communities in designing processes that affect them, including those focused on safeguarding children.

Working with wider family and network

From the first contact the practitioner will be working to understand the child or young person’s wider family and network. It is likely that some of this work has been done as part of the Early Help process, the aim is to keep building on this as we know ‘It takes a village to raise a child’. A child who is connected to many people that care and are involved with them will almost always have better outcomes and be safer.

The best outcomes and most effective safety arise when we involve the network. Practitioners will work to develop a safety network. A safety network is a group people, who are connected to the child and the family. It consists of family and community members who commit to working with us and the family to create a plan that shows everyone how the worries about the child will be managed.

The network is a critical element of the safety planning process within Signs of Safety. Every safety goal developed with a family must identifying a safety network.

No network = no safety

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Information sharing

We recognise it is important to work alongside children and their families and all organisations adopt a ‘working with’ and not ‘doing to’ approach. The importance of engaging children, young people and families from the outset and securing their consent to work with them is crucial to ensure long term improved outcomes for children.

Consent means that the family is fully informed about the services they are being referred to, agree with a referral being made and understand what information professionals are sharing and why.

There are some exceptions when there is a need to protect children and young people. For example, if having a conversation with the family would place the child, or another child, or someone else, or you the referrer, at increased risk of suffering harm you do not need consent.

You also don’t need consent if it might undermine the investigation of a serious crime or where a delay in getting consent may mean the child or young person is put at further risk of harm.

In circumstances where information is being shared without consent the practitioner should respond in line with safeguarding guidance and or procedures, such as; Children who are at risk of exploitation, fabricated and induced illness (FII), unborn and non-mobile baby protocol.

Refer to CYSCP City of York Safeguarding Children Partnership for further information.

The 7 golden rules of information sharing:

1. Remember that the Data Protection Act 2018 and human rights law are not barriers to justified information sharing, but provide a framework to ensure that personal information about living individuals is shared appropriately.
2. Be open and honest with the individual (and/or their family where appropriate) from the outset about why, what, how and with whom information will, or could be shared, and seek their agreement, unless it is unsafe or inappropriate to do so.
3. Seek advice from other practitioners if you are in any doubt about sharing the information concerned, without disclosing the identity of the individual where possible.
4. Share with informed consent where appropriate and, where possible, respect the wishes of those who do not consent to share confidential information. You may still share information without consent if, in your judgement, there is good reason to do so, such as where safety may be at risk. You will need to base your judgement on the facts of the case. When you are sharing or requesting personal information from someone, be certain of the basis upon which you are doing so. Where you have consent, be mindful that an individual might not expect information to be shared.
5. Consider safety and well-being: Make your information sharing decision after considering the safety and well-being of the individual and others who may be affected by their actions.
6. Necessary, proportionate, relevant, adequate, accurate, timely and secure: Ensure that the information you share is necessary for the purpose for which you are sharing it, is shared only with those individuals who need to have it, is accurate and up-to-date, is shared in a timely fashion, and is shared securely.
7. Keep a record of your decision and the reasons for it – whether it is to share information or not. If you decide to share, then record what you have shared, with whom and for what purpose.

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