Children Services Preventative services for children in entering Residential & Foster Care
Children Services Preventative services for children in entering Residential & Foster Care
Successful ways to improve outcomes for children and young people... S&A Care specializes in working with complex and challenging Children & Young People, we are committed to developing and delivering preventative services that allow children and young people to live safely within their own home. Our crisis intervention services, aimed at helping families with children at risk in entering the care system, have been judged a successful way to improve outcomes for children and young people, reducing admissions into care and building on families’ strengths and coping techniques.
Some of our services include: 1. Up to 24 hour in-reach support in the family home 2. Supervised Family Contact 3. 24 hour Transportation Service for Children & Young People to and from Placements, Secure Units, Courts, Schools & Health Care Appointments. 4. 24 hour Appropriate Adults Service 5. Planned and Emergency Short Breaks – Offering Children & Young People pre-planned short-term placements of a particular child with the same carer. The length and timing of the arrangements can vary according to the specific needs of the child and their family.
“we are committed to developing and delivering preventative services that allow children and young people to live safely within their own home�
In-Reach Support – Supporting the Family Home S&A Children crisis intervention services work specifically with the most vulnerable children, young people and families, providing them with urgent and intensive support at a time of crisis. This may be where there is a risk of children coming into the care system as a result of family breakdown or severe difficulties.
Research suggests that crisis intervention models are most successful with families where problems are acute rather than chronic, and that their effectiveness depends to a significant degree on the extent to which they are linked into other local services, to provide children, young people and families with continuing support after the crisis is over.
Crisis intervention can also be used to support children leaving care and returning home to live with their families, or to prevent the breakdown of a foster placement. The service builds on a family’s strengths and coping strategies, and incorporates a strong degree of challenge.
These approaches have been shown to be effective across all ethnic groups. While this S&A Children’s crisis intervention services for children at risk of admission into care, we also provide services tailored to support children and young people at risk of school exclusion, and intensive family support to families at risk of eviction.
The crisis intervention model usually involves time-limited but intensive 24-hour/seven day- a-week availability. On average, families are referred to the service for six to 12 weeks and at the end of the period the family is linked into existing local services. Crisis intervention involves defusing the immediate and precipitating crisis within the home that leads to the service referral, with support workers engaging the family, children and/or young people, liaising with other agencies, assessing the problems, developing specific, measurable goals and helping everyone in the family to acquire the skills to achieve them.
S&A for Children currently runs crisis intervention services that support families where children are at risk of entering the care system. Our services are delivered in partnership with the local authority, designed and tailored to meet local need. These services have achieved high levels of success.
Supervised Contact Services What We Do •
Ensure the safety of children during contact visits.
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Provide safe, accessible and stimulating environments where parents and children (including non-resident parents and other members of their families) are encouraged to re-establish, develop and enjoy their relationships.
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Seek to enhance parenting skills and the quality of family relationships.
1. We encourage and support parents, when it is appropriate and safe to do so, to take responsibility for their own future family contact arrangements. 2. Access family support services to further assist families referred for supervised contact. 3. Provide high quality and timely reports for courts as required. 4. Provide comprehensive child and family assessments. 5. Tailor our services to meet more complex needs, including the provision of life-story/identity work, domestic abuse services and mediation services. 6. We are experienced and skilled at working in partnership, particularly with local authorities and CAFCASS (Children and Families Courts Advisory and Support Service), courts and service users and believe that this maximises the benefit that our services bring to families.
“we are experienced and skilled at working in partnership, particularly with local authorities...�
Transportation Service for Children & Young People S&A Care are specialists in the movement and care of vulnerable individuals with challenging behaviour and have a dedicated service for the care and movement of young people with social, emotional and behaviour issues within the medical, mental health and secure sectors.
Our services include:-
We recognise the need to provide a service that is sensitive to the needs of the young person, offering them the respect and dignity that they deserve during what can be an extremely daunting and emotional experience. Our service provides a safe and secure environment for the transportation of children, young people and adolescents in a caring environment, using experienced and fully trained individuals. We offer a range of services tailored to the individual needs of the young person and the care authority.
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Escort to and from Child & Adolescent Units, Clinics & Hospitals
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Safe transportation to and from Residential Care Homes and foster placements
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Escort of young people to and from secure units
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Escort of young people to and from court
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Escort to and from Hospital and Dental Appointments, Weddings & Funerals
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Bed and cell watches
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Transport to and from Pupil Referral Units
We employ a mix of male and female staff, escorts and nurses, enabling us to meet the flexible needs of our service users, and more importantly the needs of the young person. Our staff are experienced and qualified in a range of expertise including special needs and learning difficulties.
All of our staff is subject to an enhanced CRB clearance and verification is obtained for all relevant educational, professional and vocational qualifications declared in their application. Two professional references are also obtained for every perspective employee and our staffs are regularly monitored to ensure that the highest standards of care are maintained at all times. When challenging behaviour does present a risk, de-escalation is priority for every event and approved restraint techniques will only be used as a last resort to prevent harm to both the young person and the accompanying escorts. A report on any incidents that have occurred during the transfer will be submitted to the receiving authorities. Collecting Absconders & Return 24 Hours Per Day
Appropriate Adult Service at any Police Station S&A Care provides twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We cover London, Essex, Kent & Surrey, and are able to provide a service in any area with a short lead in time. We are the fastest growing independent provider of Appropriate Adult Services. We offer services to YOT's, Independent RSU's, independent fostering agencies & care homes, Serious Crime Groups, Adult Services Teams, Police Stations, Learning Disability Teams, Substance Misuse Teams and Solicitors firms. By providing an effective appropriate adult service, S&A Care ensures that unnecessary delays caused whilst in custody are considerably reduced. These delays often lead the interviewee to become unnecessarily stressed, and could in some instances influence the accused into making a premature confession.
By making specialist, trained appropriate adults readily available The Appropriate Adult Service can ensure that all requirements of PACE are fulfilled. Presently, without this professional service, the potential for abuse, exploitation and unreliable testimony exists and inevitably, vulnerable people are suffering. S&A is able to provide a fully completed referral form to the social services within twenty four hours of our attendance. We are happy to complete a referral form designated by the local authority, develop a new one with the authority of use one of our own referral forms. A small report is made on these forms following every job, to ensure that all records are kept entirely up to date.
Short Breaks Short Breaks is a form of short-term substitute care provided by someone other than the parents or usual carers for a child or young person. ‘Short Breaks’ is a key support to families and is organised to suit the needs of the particular child / young person and family. It can take place in a hospital, residential setting or in the child's own home. It gives parents free time to give them a rest, to spend time with their other children or in an e Children and young people with learning disabilities may have a range of complex needs, a short break may just do the trick in offering the young person a break and giving that precious time for parents and family members to recharge there batteries. Some children can be referred to S&A Care will have gone through change in their lives by being withdrawn from their own family, if only for a short time. They may have been emotionally challenging and upset due to the events of a crisis.
The way in which children react and respond to changes whilst being introduced into an alternative home will be different. Some can be aggressive and un-easy; others may at first be over polite and willing to please. Others will withdraw into themselves, or act as if they haven't a care in the world. In some circumstances children can come from very deprived homes and on other occasions, they may have been neglected and not provided with the same level of care that you would be able to offer. What short breaks do, is provide the family and the child with the opportunity of a break while at the same time enabling S&A Care to gain more understanding of both the child and the family's needs. S&A Care do work very closely with families to help parents overcome the problems they experience.
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