Solutions can support you and your family to rebuild or strengthen relationships.
Social workers and lead practitioners can refer children aged 10–16 to Solutions for support when:
- they are on the ‘edge of care’ and their care plan is for the child to remain living with their family
- they are in a care placement and their care plan is to ‘return home’ to live with their family
Children are on the ‘edge of care’ when relationships are at breaking point and the family feels unable to manage their child’s behaviours and are considering care as the only option left to them. These children will be receiving support through a Child in Need Plan.
The focus of Solutions is to enable families to strengthen relationships. Bringing a psychologically informed understanding of the lived experiences of children and families. This enhances reflective thinking and fosters a culture of trust and shared understanding across teams and with children and families.
How we work with your social worker
When we receive a referral, we’ll arrange a consultation meeting with your social worker or lead practitioner to understand your child and family situation and develop a collaborative plan of support. Then the solutions team will continue to meet regularly with the social worker:
- as part of the ongoing intervention
- for attending required meetings such as Children in Need or Children We Care for Reviews
How we work with you
Solutions provide interventions with children and their families with a systemic and holistic approach. We will meet with you and your child and agree on a service agreement in collaboration with your social worker.
When children are on the ‘edge of care’, Solutions aims to identify and understand the needs within the family that are contributing to the breakdown in relationships. We consider a coordinated and flexible range of support to enable change within your family and rebuild or strengthen relationships.
For children who are in care and have a plan to return home, Solutions aims to understand what needs to happen for children to return home. This helps develop a collaborative returning home plan with your social worker, your family and the child’s carer or key worker.
We will talk to key members of the professional network (such as education, youth justice) to gain a holistic understanding of current family life and key past experiences that exacerbate or strengthen family dynamics.
We can provide support across the whole family using a solution-focused approach. This enables you to agree:
- what you want for your family relationships
- the support you need to achieve your goal
Whole family sessions can include wider family, friends and community support. They can continue at the pace the family sets, to provide a supportive environment to work through relationship difficulties. Support can also include whole family activities that help rebuild relationships and develop relational skills.
Typically, we will meet with a child to understand their strengths and areas of need. We focus on the relationships within their family and the factors that have contributed to the breakdown. This helps everyone develop a shared understanding.
Our interventions focus on relationships across the child’s day-to-day experience.
We also provide direct support to parents or key family members. This is a flexible level of support that can be as intensive as needed. For example, we could have:
- weekly structured sessions
- see a worker several times a week
- talk on the phone daily in times of crisis
Each intervention aims to build confidence and skills to strengthen family relationships.
The Psychological Hub provides the Solutions service as part of a wider group of support services.