Discover a career in Children's Services

Our Early Help Service focuses on providing universal and targeted services to families in need of support, from a range of different perspectives and approaches.

Whilst the offer is delivered by a specific area of the service, early help and intervention is an ethos which threads throughout the directorate.

One of the principles of the Face to Face model of practice is to provide the right services to the family at the right time, and much of this is facilitated via the Early Help Services alongside statutory social care and education services.

MASH

The Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) is our single point of contact for all safeguarding concerns regarding children and young people in Havering which includes front door access for Early Help.

It brings together expert professionals, from services that have contact with children, young people and families, and makes the best possible use of their combined knowledge and resources to keep children safe from harm and promote these and their families wellbeing.

Assessment

Our assessment teams offer parenting and family assessments for families who have complex and additional needs. We work with our partner agencies to help families to keep children safe.

The families we assess often present with a range of complex issues and an important part of our approach is an understanding of intergenerational factors affecting parental capacity and using our systemic model of practice to build resilience within families. 

The Care Resources service consists of Fostering support, Fostering Recruitment, Leaving Care, Special Guardianship and Contact teams.

This is an exciting vibrant area that works across a number of different service areas and plays a pivotal role in corporate parenting.

The Intervention and Support Service works with young children, teenagers and their families where there is an identified need for on-going intervention.

The service works with looked after children, children on child protection plans and those on child in need plans and also conducts all of the legal proceedings work.

We work on the principle that, wherever possible, we should preserve continuity of a social worker for children.

The service places a strong emphasis on permanency whether that can be achieved through good parenting within the family, or through a stable placement outside the family, normally adoption for younger children.

Our Integrated Adolescent Safeguarding and Support (IASS) Service encompasses our Virtual School, Youth Justice Service, Targeted Youth Support and Participation and Influence Team, including the education for Looked After Children whilst addressing serious youth violence and exploitation in Havering.

The service takes an active lead within multi-disciplinary teams in a social care environment aimed at improving opportunities for children and young people between 10 and 18 years old, in addition to young people up to 25 with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

The service is influential in establishing preventative measures focused on adolescent safeguarding and identifying triggers to detect young people vulnerable to harm and exploitation.

Our principal aim is to safeguard children and young people who may be at risk of harm outside their family and home environments and support them to make informed choices and maintain positive pathways. 

Our Children and Young Adults with Disabilities Service (CAD) brings together education and social care to work in an integrated way to achieve the best outcomes for our children and young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND).

The service consists of 4 teams 0-5 CAD Team, 5-19 CAD Team, Assessment and Placement Team and the Social Work CAD Team which supports children and young people including Short Breaks and Preparing for Adulthood.

The Innovation and Improvement Team is a project team which leads and focuses on service improvement and innovation.

The team works alongside the various services and teams within the department to identify potential new ways of working that could help increase the efficiency and quality of the service provided, and to drive change, underpinned by regional and local policy.

Business support provide administrative, organisational and strategic support throughout all of the social work teams.

The whole service has embarked on a programme of bespoke Systemic training which has given a shared language between practitioners and the administrators.

This has significantly supported the beneficial positioning of the administrators as active participants in the co-production of the work the service does.

The Safeguarding and Service Standards Unit has two main functions.

The first is to provide oversight and quality assurance and audit for Looked after Children and Children on Child Protection plans through Independent Reviewing Officers (IRO’s).

Second is to provide the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) functions in respect of allegations against staff, carers and volunteers working with children.

The Clinical Team consists of Family Therapists who work alongside social workers or family practitioners to provide therapeutic input.

Our clinical team also offer case consultations with social workers or family practitioners on cases which are particularly complex or are at risk of drift or delay. These consultations review the case from a systemic perspective and help the social worker explore and form new ways of thinking with regards to a case.