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First Contact Team and EDT

First Contact Team

The First Contact Team is the front door to Adult Social Care. They take the initial contacts that are sent through from the call centre and gather more information in order to signpost clients or transfer them through to the appropriate team, Welfare Rights, ASC, Safeguarding, Occupational Therapy.

The First Contact Team Social Workers are on hand to deal with any one-off care calls that might be needed and in addition to this they deal with emergency situations where Home Care or a placement is needed urgently to safeguard a vulnerable adult before the situation deteriorates to a point where it would need to go to the Safeguarding team.

The First Contact Team is a short term and fast paced team.

Team Manager: Beverley Hughes & Carol Crossley

EDT

EDT are the out of hours service providing cover across Sefton Children's, Adults and Mental Health services. We are lone workers with an AMHP on call. We coordinate all matters. Calls come directly to us and all matters are dealt with, input and forwarded to day services as required. We only attend to Statutory Emergencies. We work all night, all weekend and all Bank Holidays including Christmas, Easter New Year and everything in between.

We are a small team of 5 experienced social workers from Children's and Adult services. We have a small pool of back-up workers who assist us to cover leave and any sickness.

The aims of the team are as follows:

  1. To respond appropriately to all statutory referrals that are an emergency and cannot safely be left until the next working day.
  2. To provide a speedy assessment that conforms to statutory regulation and departmental policy and procedure in relation to referrals received outside of normal office hours, that indicate vulnerable adults or children may be at risk of significant harm (see constraints).
  3. To provide a prompt and effective intervention in relation to those referrals assessed as requiring a social work service, where it would be detrimental to the individuals concerned if left until the mainstream services were able to provide this service. This may include arrangements for direct service delivery such as home care, residential accommodation etc.
  4. To provide appropriate advice and information to referrers who do not require an emergency response, this may include diversion to the daytime teams, other agencies, or other departments, etc.

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