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The structure of our children's social care
service is no longer fit for purpose across North
Somerset.
We have two intake teams based in Weston-super-Mare and Nailsea
who deal with new referrals and assessments.
Our Weston Intake Team receives two-thirds of all our referrals
but this rate is unsustainable.
Our smaller Nailsea Intake Team has different issues related to
its lack of local resources and the need for it to undertake rather
than refer it elsewhere. However, this situation is fortunately now
changing.
We have three caseholding teams who work with children in need,
child protection, court work, looked after children and adoption
cases.
However, the higher risk cases naturally take priority which can
mean looked after children can be overlooked.
Our Adoption and Fostering Team recruits, supervises and offers
support to adopters, fosterers and carers.
Our 0 to 17 is our only service offering a range of
therapeutic-type services for young people and families.
It manages family group conferences used to either prevent
accommodation or gather family members together to come up with a
plan to support young people and their parents.
It is the only service which can provide quick support to
adolescents in crisis and help prevent family breakdown and the
need for accommodation.
The
Children
(Leaving Care) Act created new statutory duties in relation
to care leavers including aftercare, continuing to have contact
with them until they are 21 and a duty to ensure they live in
good accommodation.
We created our Next Step team to work with older looked after
children and care leavers from the age of 16.
However, we have found that this change was not as helpful as we
had expected.
Our Disabled Children's Team will be dealt with as part of the
plans for an integrated service for disabled children.
Another concern related to problems recruiting qualified social
workers which has been a problem for several years.
Our current structure relies on allocating cases to individual
qualified social workers.
It is claimed there are more people beginning to study for
social work degrees but locally there is little evidence of any
increase.
Therefore, we and other South West authorities tend to chase the
same pool of workers.
It is easier to recruit newly qualified staff but experienced
social workers are hard to find.
Given this problem we need to think of other ways of
working.
However, we have no problem in recruiting talented staff to our
unqualified posts. |