Contacts and Referrals

1. Initial Contacts

An Initial Contact is made with the Referral and Request team where requests for Children's Social Care involvement are received. The Referral and Request team applies the threshold criteria taken from Continuum of Support for Children and Families Living in Surrey (SSCP).

The Referral and Request team gathers information from referrers, including:

• Full names, dates of birth and gender of children;
• Family address and, where relevant, school/nursery attended;
• Identity of those with Parental Responsibility;
• Names and dates of birth of all members of the household;
• Ethnicity, first language and religion of children and parents;
• Any special needs of the children;
• Any significant recent or past events;
• Cause for concern including details of allegations, their sources, timing and location;
• The child's current location and emotional and physical condition;
• Whether the child needs immediate protection;
• Details of any alleged perpetrator;
• Referrer's relationship with and knowledge of the child and his or her family;
• Known involvement of other agencies;
• Information regarding parents' knowledge and agreement to referral.

Contacts will be sent to the Family Safeguarding Hub if further enquiries are needed to establish if the concern meets level 4 threshold. The Referral and Request Team will send contacts directly to the Early Help Hub if the concern appears to be level 2 or 3. The Early Help Hub will make enquiries and decision as to whether Advice, Support or a targeted service is required.

The Early Help Hub makes contact with the 'referrer' to discuss the contact and to explore how the needs of the family could be addressed in other ways, including an Early Help Assessment where appropriate. The Early Help Hub provides advice, guidance and signposting to other services and mobilises district support for those contacts where the provision of information or advice is appropriate.

Any Significant information about a child who is an open case will be passed to the allocated team via email. If a letter/Form is received this will be scanned into Wisdom and a case note added. If concerns meeting Level 4 threshold are received, the Referral and Request Team will call the allocated team to advise of the new referral raising serious concerns after forwarding the information to the appropriate duty inbox.

Once a Contact is opened and progressed to Referral and Children' Services intervention, an episode of involvement already exists, therefore opening a new Contact is not necessary. This is distorting the number of new contacts received.

In response to the number of Contacts that are being opened on already opened cases new Contacts on Open Cases do not need to be created for the following reasons:

• Letters from other professionals;
• Reports from Police;
• New piece of information from new source (other than the person who made the initial referral).

Such Contacts currently sit under LCS Forms. Family Support Workers, Social Workers, Managers and Business Support Staff in Children's Services Area Teams should record any new information received on open cases as follows: any new reports, letters, significant info to be uploaded in Wisdom and a casenote with a brief summary and location of the report in Wisdom is being added on LCS (Casenotes).

When receiving an enquiry relating to a child who is an open case, the Referral and Request team will forward that enquiry to the allocated team to record the concern and decide what action is required.

Social Workers, Family Support Workers and Team Managers are to be alerted via casenote in each LCS tray should the information be urgent/significant.

The Early Help Module is not a referral form, although it may be used to support a referral or a specialist assessment. If a team disagrees with the pathways followed by the Referral and Request Team, the receiving team should step up or step down as appropriate and not return the contact to the Referral and Request team to ensure there is no delay for the child.

2. Screening Process

The following process applies to new cases of children previously unknown to the authority, and to closed cases.

The process of Referrals must include screening against the Continuum of Support for Children and Families Living in Surrey (SSCP) document and must include internal (LCS) and agency checks to establish whether the family is previously known, and whether there is a Child Protection Plan in relation to the child and/or whether the child is Looked After.

The screening process should establish:

• Whether consent has been obtained;
• The nature of the concern;
• How and why it has arisen;
• What the child's needs appear to be;
• Whether the concern involves Significant Harm;
• Whether there is any need for urgent action to protect the child or any children in the household;
• Whether the child is or has been known to children's services. Whether the child has any siblings including half-siblings, or there are other children in the household, that are or have been known to children's services. Whether adult members of the child's family (including those closely connected to the child's family, i.e. mother's boyfriend) have themselves been known to children's services and whether these adult members have other children who are or have been known to children's services.

This process will involve:

• Discussion with the referrer;
• Consideration of any existing records, including whether the child is the subject of a Child Protection Plan;
• Involving other agencies as necessary.

3. Referrals

An Initial Contact received by Children's Social Care Area Teams will be progressed to a Referral where the social worker or manager considers an assessment and/or services may be required.

All referrals to children's social care should be made using the Request for Support form, and where possible submitted electronically.

Electronic referrals and enquiries should be sent securely via csmash@surreycc.gov.uk.

Enquiries and referrals from children, young people, families and members of the public can be made via 0300 470 9100.

4. Timescales

Once received, all referrals must be written up and a decision made about their disposal within one working day (as set out in Working Together to Safeguard Children Chapter 1, Assessing Need and Providing Help - paragraph 58).

5. Risk of Significant Harm

If there are indications that a child may be at risk of Significant Harm, the manager may authorise whatever actions are necessary to protect the child or others in the household from Significant Harm, which may result in the immediate provision of services.

If there is suspicion that a crime may have been committed including sexual or physical assault or neglect of the child, the Police must be notified immediately by the first member of staff to recieve the call.

If the child is subject to Police Protection the Police must transfer the child as soon as possible to local authority accommodation, though the responsibility for ongoing enquiries and any decision to release the child from police protection remains with the Police.

On receipt of notification that a child has been taken into Police Protection the Team Manager must allocate a Social Worker to undertake an assessment to determine the actions to be taken. Unless there is a specific reason, the assessment should be undertaken in conjunction with a Child Protection Enquiry (Section 47).

6. Initial Outcome of Referrals

The initial outcome of a Referral, which must be authorised by the manager, may be:

1. That the child does not appear to be a Child in Need, which will result in one of the following: the provision of information, advice, sign-posting to another agency; and
2. That the child appears to be a Child in Need with a moderate level of need, which could be addressed via an Early Help Assessment and Team Around the Family approach. In which case, the manager may instruct that contact is made with the referrer to discuss an Early Help approach, or may instruct discussion with the Early Help Hub to mobilise support services;
3. That the child appears to be a Child in Need with a high level of need, which must result in a Child and Family Assessment;
4. That it is suspected that the child is suffering or is likely to suffer from Significant Harm, which will result in a Child and Family Assessment, with a view to conducting a Strategy Discussion, prior to a Section 47 Enquiry and Child and Family Assessment commencing.

Personal information about non-professional referrers should not be disclosed to the parents or other agencies without the referrer's consent.

Parental consent must be sought before discussing a referral with other agencies unless this may place the child at risk of Significant Harm, in which case the manager should authorise the discussion of the referral with other agencies without parental knowledge or consent. The authorisation should be recorded with reasons. Information Sharing Consent Form should be used as appropriate.

7. Acknowledgement and Feedback to Referrers

A Team Manager will ensure that the referrer is contacted, in one working day:

• To acknowledge receipt of the referral; and
• To confirm the actions to be taken following the contact/referral;
• Data protection/information sharing arrangements will help to determine the next steps and whether or not further details should be shared,  with the referrer, depending on who the referrer is. If the referrer is referring on behalf of someone else or has made the decision to refer on information s/he have received, s/he will be reminded that it is his/her responsibility to feed back to the person s/he received the information from. (Again, in line with data protection/information sharing arrangements; these may need to be clarified or discussed with the referrer).

This will be recorded on LCS.

8. Recording of Referrals

Contacts and Referrals meeting the threshold for social care, should be recorded on LCS and forwarded to the appropriate team.  Where it does not meet the threshold but meets level 2 or 3 it is recorded on EHM and directed to the appropriate Early Help or Targeted Help service.

Any contacts that are progressed to a referral and then not progressed to Social Care for assessment, a rationale for the decision making will be recorded on LCS.

9. Case Allocation Considerations

Should an action following a referral include the provision of support from one of the social work teams, the allocation of each child who is a full-time or part-time member of a household to the same caseworker should always be considered. When household members are allocated to different caseworkers the respective social workers must  keep themselves aware of the care plans for each child so that these are consistent and the work is well coordinated. Following consultation, the receiving team (Assessment etc) may assign the case to the previous worker within 3 months of closing.