Starting Point receives around 23,000 contacts per year, of which approximately 60% are identified as requiring a response from children's services.
All contacts received either into Call Derbyshire (call centre), via secure email or the online referral system are screened by social workers and team managers to determine if the threshold is met for initial triage.
Triage
Social workers and pod staff undertake a robust triage of the information received. This process can include, liaison with the family and child (where appropriate for the contact with the child), information gathering from other agencies involved with the family, and completion of a chronology.
Analysis of this information aids decision-making regarding further actions. This outcome might be further actions from social care or our early help service, or signposting on to other services.
Thresholds are clearly and consistently applied within Starting Point in order to keep children safe and improve their outcomes.
Domestic abuse screening and prioritisation
All domestic abuse notifications are screened by a social worker on a daily basis to determine further actions. Stopping domestic abuse together is our joint initiative with the police, health and education partners to tackle domestic abuse in Derbyshire.
Early help and safeguarding
Having the expertise of early help and safeguarding managers working together in one front door aid the transition of contacts between all thresholds, which ultimately supports the child and family accessing the most appropriate service to meet their needs at the appropriate threshold.
Strategy meetings
Daily partnership strategy discussions take place. Social care, police and health are the core partners, other community partners engage via the spider phone, such as safeguarding leads education, health partners, and probation services.
Reflective supervision and partnership development
Regular systemic reflective supervision takes place to aid partnership learning and development.
Advice line
An advice line for partner agencies has helped to improve the quality of referrals, and the co-location of a range of workers and partner agencies means that a multi-agency view can be swiftly determined, resulting in a triage process that is robust, timely and appropriate. Tel: 01629 535353.
For more information email starting.point@derbyshire.gov.uk