Solihull Families Together is a small multi-agency team working with children on the edge of care. This new team works with children who are aged between 11-15 years and experiencing significant family breakdown.
Through the consistent and systematic application of restorative practice, Solihull Families Together aim to work with families to achieve greater stability, reduce risk, increase well-being and build resilience. By working in partnership, encouraging and promoting the involvement of children, young people and their families in decision making, we will create opportunities to support and enable families to build and strengthen their capacity to address their own difficulties supporting children to safely live within their family networks.
To enable intensive intervention, Solihull Families together practitioners will work with 4-6 children and their families. All of the children will have an allocated social worker in the statutory social worker team who we will work alongside. Once fully established, the team will consist of two social workers, two senior social workers, two specialist family support workers, a psychologist, a speech and language therapist and a manager. We will have access to specialist exploitation intervention, youth work, money mentors and addiction specialists. Using a ‘team around the worker’ approach, the goal of the families together team is to build meaningful connections with families and support them in the journey towards relational repair. We will do this by reducing the amount of workers visiting the home, and instead upskill one key practitioner to develop a strong working relationship and be a single point of contact. Weekly group supervision sessions will be attended by a range of different professionals to support the holistic consideration of families needs. Families can expect the following;
• A quick response from their allocated worker when they need us.
• Between 3-5 focused visits a week (in the evenings if necessary).
• Targeted direct work to support relational repair.
• Regular network meetings.
• Access to specialist SALT and psychological intervention if required.
