Messages for Practioners

According to children with CHSCN and their families, good practice in service provision:

● Demonstrates flexibility and responsiveness to families’ individual needs.
● Actively safeguards their “ordinary” lives and needs.
● Works in partnership with families, valuing their knowledge and expertise.
● Works with wider networks, including family, friends, other services and settings.

For Scie’s knowledge review, eight services that fulfilled these good practice criteria were selected for a practice survey.

Common features included:

● Families were perceived as competent experts.
● The child and family were acknowledged as partners in defining need.
● A high value was placed on individual relationships.
● Different aspects of a child and family’s identity were actively recognised and accommodated.
● Autonomy was delegated to frontline staff.
● High levels of flexibility and responsiveness were provided.
● Tasks such as “navigating”, “signposting”, “way-finding”, “advocating” or “key working” were included within the function of the service.