A local community have a Children Centre. The centre is located in the countries 20% most deprived wards. This ward has a relatively young population profile with lower than average proportion of over 50’s. The community have a 98% White British community, with the remaining 2% consisting of a range of ethnicities including Asian British and a settled-traveller community. Housing is owner occupied by 40%, this is lowest proportion of owner occupied housing in the borough with the remaining housing consisting of rented social housing. The ward has high levels of deprivation and is classed within the 1st quintile (for example the most 20% of Local Super Output Area in England). The ward has 10% more young people not in employment or training (NEET) than the local authority average. There are 25% of working age adults in receipt of benefit as they are out of work and this is higher than average. The 5 year olds gained a good level of attainment but this was lower than the local authority average. Speech and Language development was highlighted as a key area for development. KS4 attainment has improved but is lower than the local authority average. School absence is 9.5% which is well above the average. The child protection referrals, Looked After Children (LAC) and Child Protection Plan are above average in the ward compared to the local authority. The ward is home to 28% of all first time offenders aged between 10-17 years. Two in five children are living in poverty in the ward. Take-up of childcare was 12.8% which is again lower than the local authority average. Infant mortality rates (babies who die before first birthday) is lower compared to other wards. Breastfeeding rates have remained consistent over the last five years and are lower than the local authority average. Emergency admissions for under-fives was above the local authority average, although other wards had higher admission rates. Perinatal mortality (babies who are still born or die within 7 days of birth) are lower than the local authority average. Childhood obesity rates are higher than the local authority average. Teenage parents are significantly higher than the local authority and national average. Smoking prevalence and alcohol admissions (excessive alcohol consumption) in the ward is higher than average. The highest concentration of anti-social behaviour is located within the ward. Crime rates in the authority have dropped but the ward has the highest rates, including criminal damage, vehicle crime and domestic burglary.
The Core team at the Children Centre are employed full-time by the Local Authority consist of Family Support Workers, Early Years Outreach Workers, Early Years team providing Two Year Funded provision and one Library Links Worker. It is run by a Centre Leader who has a background in Family Counselling. The team are established and most have worked together for 8 years. Due to funding cuts the Centre is potentially clustering with another local Centre, leading to potential reconfiguration of Children Centre Leaders. Several Service-Level Agreements (SLA) are in place for other professionals to work with the centre for one or two days per week including Health Visitors, Midwives, Educational Psychologists, Inclusion Support team and a Reggio-Emilia inspired artist. Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) have an established SLA in place with the same Speech and Language Therapist working alongside the Early Years Team. They run weekly SALT sessions together for children who need support
in the centre and the surrounding community. Training sessions are shared and provided by SALT for the Early Years Team who are able to run ‘language’ sessions at the centre without SALT. The centre works with a range of partners including the Social Care Department (Children and Adult Social Workers), Local Nursery, Primary and Secondary Schools, Police, Community Association, Job Centre, Teenage Pregnancy Unit and Housing Department. The Centre also works with a range of voluntary services including the local Foodbank and Home Start. It also runs services in the locality with other key community stakeholders including the local Community Centre, Nursery School, Primary School and Youth Team.
A number of professionals are not based in the centre but run some services from the centre, sometimes alongside the children centre team and at other times without them. Some current services include two-year old funded places run by the Early Years Team. An antenatal and post-natal drop-in. Parenting courses for those with young children to teenagers are run with crèche provision provided if required. The Family support services work closely with Social Workers and provide Early Help. A share-a-story group is run at the local Primary School for under threes with a focus on Language Development by SALT and Early Years Team. The Head Teacher from the adjoining Nursery School works closely with the Children Centre Manager. They work closely on projects as they work with the same families. Some projects include transitions, where parent workshops for ‘dump the dummy’, ‘potty training’, ‘bottle to cup’ and all the centre services are offered to all family. The Nursery team and Early Years team share some staff training where relevant and work together on projects. Over recent years budgets have been decreased and the multiagency team have less resources.
Vignette One
The Head Teacher would like parents to attend an event at the Nursery. This event is aimed at trying to build partnerships with some of the most vulnerable children using the Nursery. Some families have younger siblings and the Head Teacher would like to arrange childcare for them. She approaches the neighbouring Children Centre and asks them to accommodate younger siblings in the crèche. The Crèche Leader has three places allocated for emergency respite, at the request of the family support team. The Head Teacher is insisting that these places are released to accommodate her event. The Crèche Leader is often receiving requests from the Head Teacher but does not feel she can challenge some of her unreasonable requests. Recently, the Head Teacher has told the crèche team to look into running ‘booster sessions’ for children during the summer holidays, for those children entering her Nursery in September. The Crèche Leader does not have the same staff resources in the summer as some staff need to take annual leave and she recently lost two crèche staff when redundancies were made. She is struggling to accommodate these requests and feels under pressure to find a way to meet the request. The Children Centre Leader believes in empowering her staff to lead their own areas, but the Crèche Leader who normally likes this autonomy feels that she needs support.
Characters : 1. Julie – Nursery Nurse
2. Zack – Child of Concern who attends Julie’s nursery
3. Zara – Zacks mom
4. Gill - Julies mom
5. Joy – Gills friend also Head of the areas looked after children’s department
6. Danny – Social Worker
7. Sophie – Newly qualified Social Worker
8. Robert – Zara’s new boyfriend (father of her newborn baby)
Julie works at her local nursery as a nursery nurse. Zack is a little boy who comes to the nursery and lives 2 doors away from Gill, Julies mom. On Monday morning, Zara bought Zack into nursery with his baby sister, Julie greeted them and noticed Zara had a bruise on her arm and hand. The baby had a bruise on the side of her face like a thumb mark. Julie did not speak about the bruising to Zara, but it wasn’t the first time Julie had seen marks on the children or mom. Julie also remembers her mom telling her about all the arguing she hears coming from Zara and Richards house which has increased over the last few months.
Once Julies shift had finished, she went to see her mom Gill, she told her about Zara and the baby but wasn’t sure what she should do as she was worried, they were her mom’s neighbours. Gill thought it was best not to get involved, but did have a friend Joy who worked with social services, so wouldn’t mind having a quiet chat with her. She called Joy and explained the situation but asked to be kept anonymous.
Joy thanked Gill for calling and promised she would investigate when they had time as the department were already full of cases and referrals. Joy passed the address and name to one of her team Danny and asked when he had chance could he investigate. Danny was currently working his case load and covering his colleagues, as they were on leave and had Sophie shadowing him, as she was a newly qualified social worker.
Danny passed the details to Sophie and asked her to check the name and address. Sophie found that the family are known to social services and informs Danny of this, but is also eager to arrange a home visit as she feels confident knowing the area and knows she needs to build on her experience. Danny knows that Sophie as a new Social Worker should only be shadowing but tells her to visit the premises but must call him if she needs any support.
Sophie arrives at the home of Zara and Zack and knocks the door. Robert, Zara’s new boyfriend opens the door. Sophie explains she is from social services and has come to discuss a concern that had been raised with regards to the children in the home. Robert started to shout and walked back into the house, so Sophie followed. Robert became louder and more aggressive then picked up a glass vase and threw it at Sophie hitting her on the head. Sophie ran out of the property to her car and called the police.
