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About Us

As a service we have two main tasks on the island, these are:

1. To support families to help them look after their children
2. To lead the work to keep children and young people on the island safe and protect them from harm, abuse and neglect.  

Children’s social care services share these tasks with other organisations such as:

• The police
• Health services
• Schools and education services
• Voluntary and independent child care sectors.

Children’s social care services are responsible for taking the lead for responding to concerns about children and young people from the public and other professionals.  If a crime against a child may have been committed, the police will also become involved.

Children can be harmed in many ways, through physical, sexual or emotional abuse and through neglect of their basic needs. These can all take place in the home, in the school, at clubs and sports facilities and elsewhere in the community.

We promise to handle the case sensitively taking into account the background and circumstances of the child and family.

We believe that all children and young people on the Isle of Wight have a right to enjoy the best physical and mental health.  We have a legal duty to protect them from harm and neglect, to make sure they feel safe and to offer support to parents and carers.

How we organise ourselves:
Children’s Social Care services are part of the Community Wellbeing and Social Care Directorate. 

The services provided are divided into the following areas:  

• Support for Families: this is usually provided by other organisations who may be supported or paid by us.
  
  
• Children’s First Response: this is the first point of contact for professionals and members of the public who are worried about a child or for parents seeking support.  Workers in this unit will take details of the contact and a decision will be made about the best way forward.
  
  
• Short Term Intervention: this service takes cases from children’s First Response when it has been decided that a social work assessment is needed.
  
  
• Child Protection: this service works with children and families where a child protection conference has decided that a child or young person needs a child protection plan to keep them safe or to promote their welfare and development.
  
  
• Looked After Children: this service supports children and young people living in the care of the local council.  These children may be in foster care, in residential care or being prepared for adoption.  In some cases they may live with their parents, other family members or with family friends. The service also supports young people who have left the care of the local council and are now learning to live independently.
  
  
• Children and Young Adult’s Disability Service: this service provides assessments for families requiring support with children with a diagnosed disability.  The service works with young people up to the age of 25 in order to ease the transition from children’s services to adult services.  This also includes our Short Breaks Programme, Beaulieu House (respite and residential children’s home for children with physical / learning disabilities) and Beaulieu Outreach Service.
  
  
• Fostering Services: this service recruits, trains and supports foster carers for the council’s in-house fostering service.  They also assess and support private fostering arrangements.
  
  
• Adoption: this service area assesses and prepares those who wish to adopt.  The service is involved in matching children needing adoption with adoptive parents.  The service also provides post adoption support and therapeutic support for children who have been adopted and for members of their birth and adoptive families.

Our unit structure: 
Our social work services are organised into social work units.  Each unit consists of about five workers, is led by a consultant social worker and contains social workers, therapeutic workers, children’s practitioners and a unit coordinator. 

If you receive a social work service, rather than being allocated an individual social worker you will be allocated a social work unit and all members of the unit may work with you.  

The unit coordinator’s job is to carry out all the administration and much of the communication for the unit and they will be an important reliable point of contact for communication with you.

 Please get in touch if:

• You believe that a child or young person is being abused or is at risk in some way
• You feel you are at risk of abusing a child or young person
• You are a child being abused

Please contact Children’s First Response on 01983 814374 or 01983 821105 out of hours.