Family safeguarding information for families

Family safeguarding is a way of working with families so that they can stay together and children can remain safely at home.

How to ask for support for your family

Call 0300 123 6720 or out of hours 0300 123 6722.

Your child's health visitor, doctor or school staff may also suggest a referral or may refer to social care, with your permission.

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 care worker needs to support you and other times they'll do an assessment so that we can look at what your child and family needs.

You can find out more about social care support for children and families - what social care support is, how we assess needs and how we provide help.

If your family needs a more formal plan of support, our family safeguarding teams can provide support.

How we will work with you

We will help you to identify what needs to change in your daily life and support you to make these changes.

Our specialists can support you with:

  • parenting skills
  • drug or alcohol use
  • domestic abuse
  • mental health needs

We will offer families the right support at the right time, helping you to stay together.

As a family you can expect:

  • workers who are kind and understand your family's needs
  • people who take time to listen and focus on keeping families together 
  • a team that works together so you don't have to repeat yourself 
  • staff who recognise what you and your family do well and support you to succeed

Initial child protection conferences

When professionals have concerns about a child's safety, they may hold an initial child protection conference (ICPC). This is a meeting to discuss how to ensure that children are kept safe.

An ICPC meeting includes parents, carers, children and professionals who have worked with the family.

They will discuss the concerns and needs of the family. The meeting will decide what type of plan the family needs, that is, a child in need plan or a child protection plan. You can watch a series of videos that show you what happens, before, during and after an initial child protection conference.

Suggestions and feedback

You can share your suggestions and feedback on how we can develop the service in the following ways: