If you would like further information about our services, or you would like to request help from the Children and Family Service please contact our First Contact Team on: -
First Contact Team
64 Brighton Road
Rhyl
Denbighshire
LL18 3HN
Phone: 01824 712900
Fax: 01824 712888
Confidentiality
All personal information given to a member of staff is treated confidentially. If there is a risk of harm to the child, we may need to share personal details, but only with people who need to know and are involved with caring for the child.
Complaints
If you are less than happy with the help you have received, or if you think that we are not helping enough, you have the right to complain.
Who will I speak to when I contact Children and Family Services?
If you phone or visit a Children and Family Service office, you will be put through to a member of staff in the First Contact Team. They will ask basic details about yourself and your children, or the children you are concerned about.
How soon can I expect to get help?
The First Contact Worker will be able to tell you whether they think that Children and Family Services may be able to help you, or whether you may be able to get advice or support from elsewhere. Such as: health, education and voluntary organisations.
If a child is at risk of serious harm, Children and Family Services will start to make enquiries straight away to make sure that the child is safe. In other cases The First Contact team will allocate a social work team, who will identify a social worker to find out more about the case. After the assessment, we will tell you what is likely to happen next.
When will I be allocated a Social Worker?
Once you have spoken to a member of the first contact team, they will then pass your case through to the relevant people, who in turn, will allocate a Social Worker to you.
What will happen when I have spoken to a Social Worker?
The Social Worker will want to get as much information as possible from the child’s parents or carers and the child, if they are old enough, an will want to know how they think the problems can be dealt with. The social worker will also ask other professionals who know the child, or the family, or the family, for information. This could be the school, health visitor or doctor, or any other professional involved with the family. We will treat this information confidentially.
We will gather all the information about the child and his or her family and assess what the next steps should be, and what help is needed, into an ‘initial assessment’. We will then give parents or carers a chance to see the out come of this and to add their comments.
The assessment considers the strengths of the child and family and how these can be built upon as well as looking at the problem areas. Sometimes this is straightforward and can be achieved relatively quickly. This is known as the initial assessment.
At other times, particularly if the problem is complex, an assessment can take longer and we may need to ask advice from others with specialist skills. This is known as a core assessment. If you need a core assessment, we try to ensure that it is completed within 28 working days. If it takes longer than this, we will say why this is so.
Much of the information for an assessment comes from the family themselves. In order to be able to get the right kind of help, Children and Family Services works hard with children and their families to get assessments right.
