The family safeguarding approach: 5 years on

The family safeguarding approach has played a key role in reducing caseloads for social workers and the number of court proceedings in Oxfordshire County Council’s (OCC) children’s services.

There has also been a 23% reduction in the total number of children’s cases open to statutory services from March 2022 to December 2024.

In the same period, the number of open child protection plans decreased by 19% along with a 12% downturn in the number of children in care.

How has this been achieved?

Five years ago, in 2020, Oxfordshire implemented the family safeguarding approach, pioneered by Hertfordshire County Council in 2015.

The broad aim of the approach is to keep children with their families, where it is possible and safe to do so. This, therefore, reduces the number of children that go into care and subsequently lowers the cost to the local authority.

Alisha, social worker in a family support and safeguarding team

There are 17 teams using the approach in OCC. Called family support and safeguarding teams, they include the multi-agency safeguarding hub and assessment service.

The multidisciplinary structure of a family support and safeguarding team helps families holistically.

“You are working with the family, not against them,” says social worker Alisha who has been at OCC since she completed her assessed and supported year in employment (ASYE) there.

“It was eye-opening for me to see how close-knit the work is across the services, which is obviously really helpful when you’ve got families where there are significant concerns,” says Alisha.

“It helps with accessing information that you need quite fast. Just to be able to put a multi-service approach around a family to reduce safeguarding concerns is so helpful.”

The family support and safeguarding teams consist of social workers and specialist adult practitioners – those that specialise in the ‘trio of vulnerabilities’ – substance misuse, domestic abuse and mental health problems.

The idea is that when there is a child in need, the parents or carers can also be offered the support they need. And if this is done at the ‘early help’ stage, then even better.

Highlights of the family safeguarding model

Working closely with practitioners with these specialties speeds up how quickly social workers can allocate support to parents.

As well as having specialist domestic abuse, substance misuse and mental health practitioners within a family support and safeguarding team, there is extra support if social workers think a parent, child or young person needs it.

A clinical team made up of psychologists is at hand, as well as access to the Building Bridges service, which focuses on families with teenagers.

Group supervision with the whole team enables practitioners to discuss each family and make sure the joined-up approach is working. Shared workbooks are used so that all professionals have access to a family’s history.

“I think families can get quite frustrated if you’re asking them questions about stuff that they’d expect you to know,” says Alisha. “So, it’s useful in that sense as well, just for the families to be assured that there’s a whole professional network that is in constant communication.”

Joel Carvalho, assistant director of family support and safeguarding

Motivational interviewing, a strengths-based form of counselling designed to strengthen people’s commitment to make desired changes in their lives, is another important tool for practitioners.

Assistant director of family support and safeguarding Joel Carvalho, explains the importance of motivational interviewing and co-production.

“It’s based on the understanding that parents know their kids best; they are the experts of their children and we need to work with them.

“When we’re putting plans in place they don’t necessarily work unless it’s co-produced with the parents and with the children because we need their buy-in,” he says.

Lower caseloads

In OCC, social workers like Alisha generally have relatively low caseloads. In some parts of the service, caseloads are at a steady 15.

Cases are allocated by team managers based on the complexity of the case.

For example, if a social worker is already working with many children in court proceedings, they may not be allocated more cases until the amount of court-related work has reduced. This is deliberately done to avoid overwhelm and stress for practitioners.

Restorative approach

Family networking meetings are another component of the approach. These involve the family, the extended family and all professionals involved coming together to discuss plans, including the logistics of how a parent will access a service.

This gives parents the opportunity to ask questions and make sure everyone is aware of who is doing what and when.

Delia Mann, assistant director of early help, assessment and prevention, has been at Oxfordshire for most of her career. She is passionate about working in partnership with parents as opposed to treating them like ‘clients’ and believes strongly in the benefits of the family network meetings.

Delia Mann, assistant director of early help, assessment and prevention

“There’s that sense of a shared ambition to help you be the best parent you can be and that came through quite clearly in terms of how people felt heard and listened to,” says Delia.

“One particular family I can think of could see that we were together in terms of messaging and having a common goal. This was not their experience previously from different professionals.”

Due to the success of the family support and safeguarding teams, a plan to embed the approach’s values across other services is in place.

Delia, who was heavily involved in the implementation of the approach, says, “It’s about the local authority wanting to embrace the values of the family safeguarding approach across the whole of the county.

“Primarily, it was a local authority-driven way of working with families and what we want to do is have it as a partnership way of working with families as well as a practice model within children’s social care.”

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