2.3 Outreach

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Good Practice
3. Referral Process

1. Introduction

Outreach and home visiting serve 2 main purposes (Sure Start Children's Centres Practice Guidance, DH 2006):

• Raising awareness in the community as a whole and the range of services on offer and
• For those families who cannot or choose not to come into the Centre, providing important information and access to services thereby reducing the risk of exclusion.

2. Good Practice

• Making links with the health visiting team to make joint visits to parents of young children.
• Building strong links with community groups and organisations in order to make contact with most isolated families.
• Use home visits as a first step along a road that will lead eventually to an excluded parent accessing centre based services, becoming less isolated, more confident and better able to cope as a parent.
• Encourage families to see the benefit of centre based activities for the parent and the child.
• Programme of visits to a family should be time limited, although timing will vary according to levels of needs.
• A referral system should be in operation and serviced delivered at home should be regularly reviewed.
• Information sharing and recording protocols should also be in place.
• Staff involved in outreach work need appropriate training including: how to signpost parents to further services, risk assessment, personal safety, confidentiality procedures and training on specific aspects such as child protection and domestic violence.
• Systems need to be in place to ensure families using the outreach service are monitored and trends should be tracked in other service usage by particular groups to determine in particular if those that have in the past been excluded from attending mainstream services are now more readily accessing this type of provision.

3. Referral Process

Referrer identifies family with child(ren) 0-5 living in the area who would benefit from attending the Children's Centre but would need additional support before coming into the centre.

The referrer completes referral form, following consent from parent(s) and this form is passed to the Manager at the Children's Centre.

Once the referral has been received a staff member from the Centres Team may seek further information from other professionals involved with the family.

A joint initial home visit is arranged with the referrer and Centre Family Support Worker to establish needs of family and which Centre services it would be appropriate for them to attend. Any additional needs are also noted.

Staff should be aware of the Children's centres Lone Working Procedures (Section 5: Home Visits).

Findings from initial visit are then brought back to the Manager to discuss and plan further home visiting sessions and other avenues of support as appropriate.

Due to staffing capacity some outreach referrals may be undertaken by other agencies, including PACT and PSLA, working in partnership with the children's centre. If this is the case the referrer will be informed before any action is taken. 

End