Referrals to the Family Support and Safeguarding Service

The Family Support and Safeguarding Service is made up of a range of people, teams and organisations working with children, including:

• Children’s centre staff and partner agencies, eg health visitors, providing services for all children
• Family support teams, providing services for children with additional needs
• Specialist children’s social care teams, eg Safeguarding and Children in Care teams and social workers, providing services for children with complex needs.

They work together to offer help and support in a range of areas, including:

• Working to reduce the effect on children of domestic abuse, mental health problems, and drug or alcohol use by parents.
• Working to prevent family breakdown.
• Working with families to meet the Think Family guidelines for troubled families. In particular, families where: children aren’t going to school regularly, one or more parents are unemployed or parents don’t have enough time to look after their children.
• Offering advice about the impact of substance misuse, domestic abuse, mental health issues, sexual exploitation and antisocial behaviour
• Offering parenting advice.
• Arranging one-to-one sessions with children or young people.
• Undertaking assessments of children who may be a ‘child in need’.

Making sure that Birmingham Children's Trust does everything that it must do to help the most vulnerable children.