West Berkshire Threshold Guidance
West Berkshire Thresholds Guidance Booklet explains the thresholds (including risk factors and protective factors) and the appropriate routes into services. This is a guide only and should not be read as a definitive list of risk factors. It is important that good quality, appropriate referrals are made to ensure that the right service is given to the right child/young person, at the right time and in the right place. However, you must use your professional experience and if you feel a child/young person is at significant risk, you should make a referral.
You can download a PDF version of the West Berkshire Threshold Guidance Booklet here.
Whilst the threshold guidance documents across Berkshire West are very similar, this document should be used for children who reside in West Berkshire. For children residing in West Berkshire or Wokingham, please access the guidance for those areas at:
Berkshire West Safeguarding Children Partnership - Wokingham Threshold Guidance
Berkshire West Safeguarding Children Partnership - Reading Threshold Guidance
West Berkshire Threshold Guidance
Introduction
Resolving Professional Difference of Opinion and Escalation
Levels of Help
Description of Thresholds – Risk factors and protective factors to consider
Level 1 - Help for everyone
Level 2 - Additional help
Level 3 - Intensive Help
Level 4 – Specialist Help
The Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS) Pathway
What happens when I contact the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS)?
Consent and Information Sharing
Additional Service Information
West Berkshire Directory, Family Information Service and Local offer
Early Help and Earlier Response and Intervention
West Berkshire Family Safeguarding Model
Risk of harm outside the family home
Allegations Management
Useful Links
Acronyms
Introduction
Every child and family are unique; their needs must be carefully considered with them so that the help they receive is right for them. This threshold document supports practitioners to make a professional judgement about the best way to respond appropriately to individual children and their family contexts where there are needs or risk of harm.
This threshold document is intended to support the wider service partnership to work together, to share information and put the child and their family at the centre, providing effective support to help them solve problems and find solutions at an early stage to prevent problems escalating. This document is not an assessment tool and does not replace any professional judgement, rather it should be treated as a guide to assist in decision making.
This document provides example indicators for each level of need but by no means is this list exhaustive or prescriptive. The examples shown are indicative and not definitive of each level of need. The examples, when taken in isolation, may not amount to a cause for a concern, but when several of them are taken together, this helps to inform judgement about what to do next. This is not a science but an art – use your professional judgement when considering both the range and scale of needs in the threshold document as well the resilience and protective factors that surround the child’s life.
This guidance should be used as a reference point alongside your organisation’s policies and procedures. Berkshire Child Protection procedures can be found here.
Remember: safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility!
Members of the public and professionals requiring advice should contact West Berkshire Children’s Services Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS) who will then review the information about those needs and determine the most appropriate level of service to be provided, which may be universal, Early Help or statutory provision. Professional referrers are expected to gain parental consent to share information prior to making a referral for further services, unless to do so would place the child at risk of further harm.
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Resolving Professional Difference of Opinion and Escalation
Differences of opinion relating to the level of risk will exist and are an expected part of day-to-day quality practice. Professionals are expected to discuss these differences in a professional and productive manner with a view to finding a solution that best serves the child’s needs. However, in order to be able to resolve difficulties within and between agencies quickly and openly there are a number of key principles that need to be adopted by all professionals:
- Seek to resolve any professional differences of opinion at the lowest possible level and within the shortest possible timescales
- Encourage others to challenge or question your own practice
- Respond positively to feedback
- The tone of challenge should be one of respectful enquiry, not criticism – ‘be curious’
- Challenge should be evidence based and solution focused
- Be persistent and keep asking questions
- Always keep a written record of actions and decisions taken
If differences are not able to be resolved at a practitioner level, then the issue needs to be raised with line managers/designated post holders who will investigate and liaise with the other relevant manager(s). Full details of the Resolving Professional Difference of Opinion and Escalation Procedure can be found here. We also have local guidance and tools to support this process in a solution focused way, which can be found here.
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Levels of Help
Our framework follows the ‘windscreen’ model illustrated below. It is a model of practice whose aim is to assist practitioners and managers in assessing and identifying a child’s level of need, what types of services/resources might meet those needs and the process to follow in moving from the identification of need to the provision of services. It is important to say that each child is an individual within their own context and realise that each child’s situation is unique and specific to them. The model provides a guide to support professional judgements in determining the next course of action to meet those needs.
Our approach is underpinned by the following key principles:
- Children at levels 2 to 4 can also benefit from, and should access, universal services (for example education and healthcare services) and voluntary sector organisations
- Children can be at different levels for education, health and care within the continuum of need diagram
- Children should be enabled to move quickly and effortlessly to the required service response without necessarily going through each level
- Families should only have to tell their story once
- Children and their families have a right to have their views heard, including children who are non-verbal – and this should have a strong influence on what happens next and be at the centre of what we do
- Our services should be child focused but also operate within the context of whole family working.
Continuum of Need:
The terms ‘step up’ and ‘step down’ are commonly used to describe children moving between levels of need and are used within the guidance to describe the process by which children’s needs can change.
Children’s and young people’s situations and needs can change unexpectedly, and this means that practitioners should be familiar with the continuum of need so that if and when a child’s needs change due to a reduced or increased level of concern, then they do not fall between the services. Instead, children are held safely in the transition from one service/step to another. Wherever possible, a successful intervention should result in a safe step down to universal services.
Level 1: Help for everyone:
All children and families using widely available universal services in the community to help them to learn, progress and develop to their full potential. The majority of children living in West Berkshire require support from universal services alone. Children at this level have no additional needs; all their health and developmental needs will be met by universal services. These are children who consistently receive child focused caregiving from their parents or carers.
Level 2a: Additional Help:
Some children will have additional needs. Their health and development may be adversely affected and would benefit from extra help in order to make the best of their life chances. These children require additional support usually from a single agency to address the concern that has been identified. This may include children with disabilities accessing universal short breaks with support or targeted short breaks. The My Family Plan is one of a number of useful tools that should be used to track and assess the impact of the support offered to the child.
Level 2b: Focused help for multiple needs:
Children whose needs/requirement for help are of greater depth and significance and must be met or their health, social development or educational attainment may be impaired without support, which may lead to long-term poor outcomes. Children are vulnerable and may be living with considerable adversity, including SEN and/or disabilities. This is the level at which there is a need for a clear coordinated multi-agency response and a referral to the Early Response Hub in the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service may be appropriate. This could lead the initiation of a support plan, My Family Plan or targeted intervention. Targeted packages of outcome focused support should be considered.
Level 3: Intensive help:
These are children who are unlikely to achieve or maintain a satisfactory level of health or development, or their health or development will be significantly impaired without the provision of services; including children who are disabled. They may require longer term intervention from statutory, specialist or integrated targeted services. The My Family Plan can be used as supporting evidence to gain specialist or targeted support. This is the threshold for a statutory assessment led by children’s social care under section 17, Children Act 1989.
Level 4: Specialist help:
Children who are living in circumstances where they are suffering or are likely to suffer significant harm, where the young person themselves may pose a risk of serious harm to others or where there are complex needs in relation to disability and may require a more specialist intervention. Children and young people will be referred to children’s social care and dealt with under section 47, 20 or 31 of the Children Act 1989. This will also include children who have been remanded into custody and statutory youth offending services.
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Framework for assessment of children in need and their families
Each level is broken down into three sections based on the standard Government ‘framework for assessment of children in need and their families’ (see diagram below). Under each section we have grouped the risk factors and protective factors to enable you to navigate the document more easily and track/compare increasing levels of risk. For children with disabilities increasing/decreasing levels of need are just as necessary to track alongside risk.
We use the assessment model that describes three parts of a child’s life:
- Child development
- Parenting capacity
- Family and environmental factors – to consider extra-familial and contextual risks
Child’s Viewpoint
Practitioners should always consider the factors above in terms of what it means for the child; consider their needs and the impact of any risk. The Scottish Government have created the ‘My World Triangle’ to help practitioners look at need and risk from the child’s point of view and understand the child’s world.
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Description of Thresholds – Risk factors and protective factors to consider
This section provides a table of information outlining a set of possible descriptors and related protective factors for each of the levels of need. The list of features outlined in the tables is not an exhaustive list; please remember to use your professional judgement.
Level 1 - Help for everyone:
All children and families using widely available universal services in the community to help them to learn, progress and develop to their full potential. The majority of children living in West Berkshire require support from universal services alone. Children at this level have no additional needs; all their health and developmental needs will be met by universal services. These are children who consistently receive child focused caregiving from their parents or carers.
If you believe the child falls within this level but would like some additional information, explore options for support for the family via the West Berkshire Family Information Service:
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Level 2 - Additional help:
Level 2a: Additional help - Some children will have additional needs. Their health and development may be adversely affected and would benefit from extra help in order to make the best of their life chances. These children require additional support usually from a single agency to address the concern that has been identified. This may include children with disabilities accessing universal short breaks with support or targeted short breaks. The My Family Plan is a useful tool that should be used to track and assess the impact of the support offered to the child.
Level 2b: Focused help for multiple needs - Children whose needs are of greater depth and significance and must be met or their health, social development or educational attainment may be impaired without support, which may lead to long-term poor outcomes. Children who have additional vulnerabilities, which may expose them to heightened risk without earlier support and intervention. This is the level at which there is a need for a clear coordinated multi-agency response and a referral to the Early Response Hub in the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service may be appropriate. This could lead the initiation of a support plan, My Family Plan or targeted intervention.
REMEMBER: It is possible for different agencies to provide a targeted service to different members of a family at this level. Practitioners will need parental consent to share relevant information with other involved professionals.
If you believe the child falls within this level please contact the West Berkshire Children’s Services Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS):
- telephone - Practitioner - 01635 503190
- telephone – Member of the public – 01635 503090
- or email child@westberks.gov.uk
The Contact and Advice Safeguarding Hub within the CAAS team will be able to establish whether the threshold for statutory intervention has been met. If not, they will open an Early Response record which will be passed to the multi-agency group in the Early Response Hub. They will review the needs of the child and their family. This could lead to:
- Provision of advice, guidance and consultation
- Request to initiate a My Family Plan
- Early Response visit from a My Family First worker from the My Family First (MFF) team
- MFF or Homestart intervention offered
- Single Assessment undertaken if case deemed to be at level 3
A process chart is available in the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service Pathway section of this document along with a description of what happens when you contact CAAS.
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Level 3 - Intensive Help:
Children will have multiple and complex needs and be in need of specialist intervention, sometimes on a long-term basis, to achieve or maintain a satisfactory level of health or development or to prevent significant impairment of their health and development, including children with disabilities. This is the threshold for a statutory assessment led by children’s social care under section 17, Children Act 1989, although services are often provided by a range of other provision outside of children’s social care
REMEMBER: Consent to share information from the parents (or young person if appropriate) is required unless there are concerns that doing so would leave a child or young person at risk of significant harm – in which case you should go straight to level 4.
If you believe the child falls within this level please contact the West Berkshire Children’s Services Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS):
- telephone - Practitioner - 01635 503190
- telephone – Member of the public – 01635 503090
- or email child@westberks.gov.uk
The CAAS team will establish, through review of the information given and any information held already with partners agencies (where applicable) the appropriate level of support that might be required. The possible outcomes of an initial contact are:
- You might be offered Advice and if necessary, you will be directed to another service which can best meet the needs of the child/family.
- Further enquiries or information gathering are undertaken by the multi-agency team of professionals within CAAS and a MASH process may be utilised.
- A Single Assessment is undertaken
- Child Protection enquiries are undertaken
A process chart is available in the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service Pathway section of this document along with a description of what happens when you contact CAAS.
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Level 4 – Specialist Help:
If you think a child is at immediate risk of significant harm, contact the Children’s Social Care Front Door or in an emergency phone 999.
Level 4 is for children who are living in circumstances where they are suffering or are likely to suffer significant harm, where the young person themselves may pose a risk of serious harm to others or where there are complex needs in relation to disability and may require a more specialist intervention. Level 4 also includes Tier 4 health services which are specialised services in residential, day patient, or outpatient settings for children and adolescents with severe and/or complex health problems.
Children and young people will be referred to children’s social care and dealt with under section 47, 20 or 31 of the Children Act 1989. This will also include children who have been remanded into custody and statutory youth offending services.
REMEMBER: Consent to share information from the parents (or young person if appropriate) is required unless there are concerns that doing so would leave a child or young person at risk of significant harm.
If you believe the child falls within this level please contact the West Berkshire Children’s Services Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS):
- telephone - Practitioner - 01635 503190
- telephone – Member of the public – 01635 503090
- or email child@westberks.gov.uk
A process chart is available in the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service Pathway section of this document along with a description of what happens when you contact CAAS.
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The Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS) Pathway
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What happens when I contact the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS)?
CAAS will establish if the threshold for statutory intervention has/has not been met. If statutory intervention is not required, an Early Response Record will be generated, and this will be progressed by the Earlier Response Multi-Agency Triage.
For any concerns about a child, you may speak to a social worker who will discuss your concerns with you and may request additional information. They will provide advice, guidance and consultation. It may be agreed, that based on the information provided, that an Early Response (including My Family Plan) is required, or you may be redirected to an early help or universal service. If the threshold for statutory intervention is met, a single assessment will be processed. If there are Child Protection concerns this will be progressed alongside a Section 47 enquiry. The Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub process will be utilised for those cases deemed appropriate.
All enquires will be sent an outcome letter from CAAS. At Level 2, this will occur following completion of the Earlier Response form via the Earlier Response Triage. At Levels 3 and 4, this will be following the completion of the contact record.
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Consent and Information Sharing
All practitioners should aim to gain consent to share information but should be mindful of situations where to do so would place a child at increased risk of harm. Practitioners should be aware that consent is not necessarily needed in order to share personal information but where possible, consent should be pursued in an open and honest manner.
Consent will need to be sought for each episode of work that a professional undertakes with a family. An example of this would be if a case has been closed then re-opened, the consent must be re-sought when the case is re-opened.
All practitioners should be confident of the processing conditions under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. This includes the lawful basis for processing data adopted by Local Authorities as set out in article 6 of the UK GDPR, which allow them to store and share information for safeguarding purposes, including information which is sensitive and personal. The GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 do not prevent, or limit, the sharing of information for the purposes of keeping children safe.
Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018) emphasises the importance of sharing information early and that practitioners should be proactive in sharing information as early as possible to assist in identifying, assessing and responding to risks or concerns about the safety and welfare of children. This should be the case whether the child is already known to the local authority’s children’s social care or if the risk is emerging. Information sharing can also be pivotal for identifying patterns of behaviour for when a child has gone missing or to provide contextual background when multiple children appear associated to similar locations of risk.
Fears about sharing information must not be allowed to stand in the way of the need to promote the welfare, and protect the safety, of children, which must always be the paramount concern. It should not be assumed that someone else will pass on information that may be critical in keeping a child safe. All organisations and agencies should have arrangements in place that set out clearly the processes and the principles for sharing information.
For further advice on information sharing please follow this link to the Pan Berkshire Procedures.
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Additional Service Information
West Berkshire Directory, Family Information Service and Local offer
The West Berkshire Directory is a single access point for information to support families, adults and those with children with special educational needs and disabilities. The West Berkshire Family Information Service (FIS) offers a telephone and on-line directory service, dedicated to providing free up to date information for parents, parents to be, carers and professionals to help support children up to their 20th birthday or 25th birthday if a child has a disability. It brings together all information under one roof as an information hub and a marketplace for information, advice and guidance. This service is suitable for any child accessing universal services appropriately but where some additional information or exploring additional options for support for the family would be beneficial, this includes information on Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) services – known as the Local Offer. Search the broad range of national and local information to give you easy access to registered childcare, leisure activities, support and services in your area by clicking here.
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Early Help and Earlier Response and Intervention
Early Help refers both to help in the critical early years of a child’s life and to help throughout a child, young person and family’s life too. Early help intervention should happen as soon as possible when difficulties emerge in order to prevent problems from worsening or becoming entrenched. Working Together 2018 states that ‘Providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later. Early help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life, from the foundation years through to the teenage years.’
In West Berkshire we provide a robust, needs led Early Help Offer, linking statutory partners, agencies and voluntary sector partners, to enable children and families to help themselves, build resilience and live happy, productive everyday lives.
We recognise that emerging needs within families are often best supported by practitioners known to the family, such as health visitors, schools or community-based programmes offered by the voluntary sector. West Berkshire Family Hubs provide direct support for families through individual support, targeted and universal group sessions and by working closely with health, schools and local early years providers. Family Hubs have strong links with Children and Family Services working alongside to ensure the effective use of early help. We have embedded the use of an early help tool, (the My Family Plan) for use by key partners outside of Children and Family Services.
Within the West Berkshire Children and Family Services, our Early Response Hub use an Earlier Response model to address those children and families whose needs require a higher level of input than early help, but do not reach statutory threshold. The Early Response Hub is delivered in partnership with Contact, Advice and Assessment Service (CAAS) and the My Family First Service (MFF) and includes input from various agencies including voluntary sector partners. Alongside the CAAS/MFF Early Response Hub we will also utilise an adapted Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) model, employing multi-agency meetings in the form of group supervision to enhance our safeguarding capability at an earlier stage.
All relevant agencies/partners should be committed to use The My Family Plan as a tool to evidence progression of the agreed plan, and follow the process for instigating, reviewing and as appropriate, ending the plan in agreed timescales, in order to meet the needs (which may alter) of the child and family throughout their journey. The My Family Plan is a tool to facilitate with the child and family a multi-agency response. If the child/family require signposting for a bespoke time limited community service (i.e. completion of a parenting course), a My Family Plan is not required.
Through working together and ‘with’ families using the My Family Plan tool and using strength-based approaches, restorative practice and motivational interviewing we will support and enable access to coordinated early help in accordance with the identified need as soon as difficulties become apparent - particularly for those with multiple and complex needs. The support offered will be based on a robust assessment of need, will be personalised, evidence based, multi- agency in its approach and strengths based. This is in line and is driven by the aims of the West Berkshire Early Help Strategy.
The key principles behind this approach are:
- Children and young people and their families/carers will be supported to live safe, happy, healthy and fulfilling lives which promotes their development into responsible adult citizens
- Effective and timely early help services, and earlier response and intervention can break the inter-generational cycle of risk and vulnerability
- Effective early help services, and earlier response and intervention approaches, underpinned by robust Universal Services will support families to become more resilient and develop the capability to prevent and resolve problems themselves - this is our vision for community capacity building and developing an asset-based approach
- Effective and timely early help services with earlier response and interventions can help to reduce demand for higher cost specialist services and achieve much greater use of community based preventative services. These include our Family hubs offer (a family hub supports families from pregnancy through early years and later to childhood, up to the age of 19 or 25 for young people with special educational needs and disabilities), the 0-19 integrated Public Health offer, our schools and neighbourhood services.
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West Berkshire Family Safeguarding Model
The Family Safeguarding Model has been designed to tackle the challenges around Children’s Safeguarding and in particular, the compounding factors to risk of harm of domestic abuse, substance misuse and mental health. The aim of the model is to support Children’s social workers in tackling these risk factors through multi-disciplinary teams that can work with the adults in the family alongside the Children’s social workers to ensure a timely and consistent response.
The aim is that from the first point of contact with Children’s Services (Contact, Advice and Assessment Service) we want to prevent children entering the care system and keep families together safely, improve the health and educational achievements of children and reduce emotional, physical harm and neglect.
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Risk of harm outside the family home
Contextual Safeguarding is an approach to understanding, and responding to, young people’s experiences of harm beyond their families.
It recognises that the different relationships that young people form in their neighbourhoods, schools and online can feature violence and abuse. Parents and carers have little influence over these contexts, and young people’s experiences of extra-familial pressures can undermine parent-child relationships. Therefore, children’s practitioners need to engage with individuals and sectors who do have influence over/within extra-familial contexts, and recognise that assessment of, and intervention with, these spaces are a critical part of safeguarding practices.
Contextual Safeguarding, therefore, expands the objectives of child protection systems in recognition that young people are vulnerable to abuse in a range of social contexts.
We are developing a multi-agency approach to working with young people where traditional safeguarding approaches are not appropriate, but where significant harm to that young person exists. The levels of need described below include risks for these young people and cases that meet the threshold criteria, as with any other case, should be referred to the Contact Advice Assessment Service. From the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service through to Family Safeguarding, questions that relate to contextual safeguarding issues are asked including at an early help and earlier response level.
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Allegations Management
If a contact, regardless of the need of the child, indicates that a person who works with children (including volunteers) has:
- behaved in a way that has harmed, or may have harmed a child
- possibly committed a criminal offence against or related to a child or children; or
- behaved towards a child or children in a way that indicates they may pose a risk of harm to children
- behaved or may have behaved in a way that indicates he or she is unsuitable to work with children.
This must be referred to the Contact, Advice and Assessment Service, who will allocate to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO). The LADO will assess and determine any necessary action in relation to the worker. Responsibility for statutory safeguarding and assessing the needs of the child remains with Children’s Social Care. If it is not clear whether the Allegations Management threshold (as listed above) is met, the LADO is available for consultation. (Contact details are in the Useful Links section below.)
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Useful Links
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Acronyms
| ADHD |
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder |
| BWSCP |
Berkshire West Safeguarding Children Partnership |
| CAMHS |
Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service |
| CAAS |
Contact, Advice and Assessment Service |
| ERH |
Early Response Hub |
| FIS |
Family Information Service |
| GP |
General Practitioner |
| LADO |
Local Authority Designated Officer |
| MASH |
Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub |
| MFF |
My Family First Service |
| SEND |
Special Education Needs or Disabilities |
| YOT |
Youth Offending Team |