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Staff Handbook

Contents Page 1. Our Children’s Contact Centres 2. What we do 3. Our Staff Team 4. Referral Process 5. Quick Do’s & Don’ts when supervising family time 6. Report writing 7. EISi guidance 8. AR3s 9. Policy links

Introduction We are excited to welcome you to the Children’s Contact Centre Service (CCCS) to join our staff group. This booklet is designed to assist you to familiarise yourself with the service & to help you understand some of the processes & procedures we have in place to ensure the smooth operation of the service. Our mission is to provide a safe welcoming environment where families can enjoy their family time together. I hope you find this booklet helpful. Whilst the booklet is not designed to be a definitive guide to working in the CCCS, we constantly strive to improve, so if you feel we have missed something out of this booklet please let us know. Welcome to the Team, we hope you have a long & positive career with us!

k r i K y Mand

Children's Contact Centre Manager

Our Contact Centres Bromley have two Contact Centres covering the borough: 1. Orpington Contact Centre where we have 4 contact rooms 2. Royston Contact Centre where we have 3 contact rooms

Orpington Contact Centre Lych Gate Road Orpington BR6 0TJ

Royston Contact Centre 298 Kent House Road Beckenham

BR3 1UF 020 3364 6815 07866 924 199

020 8778 3966 07773 112 780

Opening Hours 10am to 6pm Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm Saturday and Sunday

Building Security & Fire Safety Security: Both centres have secure access for the safety of children in our care, parents and our staff. As a member of staff please ensure you are familiar with the Fire Safety Plan. Maps are available in each room or area of the buildings showing exit routes, please familiarise yourself with these. Useful Links: ROYSTON Fire Safety Plan Royston Fire Safety Leaflet Royston Fire Evacuation Map Royston Fire Evac Plan ORPINGTON Fire Safety Plan Orpington Fire Safety Leaflet Orpington Fire Evacuation Map Red Room Fire Evacuation Map First Floor

What we do... The Children’s Contact Centres provide a safe, neutral space where children & their families can enjoy family time together. Family time provides an opportunity for assessing the level of interaction between parents and their children, but more importantly keeps the link alive for children who are not living with their parents/carers. The family time also presents as an opportunity for parents to develop their parenting skills & to take some ownership of the change process. Our Supervised Contact Workers are there to observe & record how well each family time session has gone. They can also offer support and guidance to help improve family time should this be needed. All staff work together to ensure that we provide a warm, welcoming, efficient, & most importantly, a ‘child focussed’ service.

What we don't do... We can't provide transport for contact arrangements. We can't provide sibling contact where the contact is just for the children. We can't make decisions about children & families, we act on instruction from the referrer, usually the child’s Social Worker.

Our Team! Contact Centre Manager Has responsibility for the day-to-day management of the Children’s Contact Centres in Bromley. Contact Coordinators Manage requests for Child Contact from Children’s Social Care, as well as via a sold service to other LAs & organisations. They also manage & develop a team of Supervised Contact Workers. Supervised Contact Workers Observe & supervise family time between children & family members, or friends. They record & report on their observations of the session to support social workers & other professionals in their work. Support Workers Assist in the day-to-day running of the Contact Centres ensuring they are fit for purpose; warm & welcoming, clean & tidy, & appropriately resourced & safe. Administrative Officers Provide vital administrative & general support to ensure the smooth day-to-day running of our Contact Centres. Link to staff list

Peripatetic working All staff are peripatetic which means that they may be required to work across either centre, in the community, in a family home or at another Bromley venue.

Agency Supervised Contact Workers Due to staff vacancies, at times the service will need to recruit Agency Supervised Contact Workers.

Work Patterns & Lunch Breaks Full time staff are required to work 36 hours per week across five days. The working day should start at 09.48 AM. This includes a one-hour unpaid lunchbreak. Agency staff are expected to adopt the same work pattern (unless agreed otherwise). Agency staff can claim for Bank Holidays if their regular work pattern falls on one.

Agency Timesheets Please ensure that timesheets are completed accurately reflecting the correct days & times that you worked. Remember that lunch breaks are not paid. Please do not add a claim until you have worked the hours being claimed.

Laptops & Mobile Phones All staff will be allocated a laptop. Agency Staff should receive one approximately 2-3 weeks after they start their placement. For the first few weeks they will be able to use the desktop computers based in each centre. *You cannot use your own personal laptop.* All Supervised Contact Workers will receive a mobile phone.

Your ID badge All staff will be issued with an ID badge that will need collecting from the print lodge at the Civic Centre, details will be emailed to you.

Induction of Supervised Contact Workers Regardless of your experience in your first few days you will be required to shadow some family time sessions with an existing member of the team, so that you can see how we operate. Following this induction period you will be allocated cases & will be expected to supervise family time sessions independently. You may be allocated up to 3 sessions per day, although the average is 2.

Outlook You will be given an email account; this is where you receive your allocated work. It is your responsibility to check your emails regularly. Any changes to arrangements will be communicated to you either verbally or by email.

Referral Process Referrals from Bromley’s Social Workers There is a standard referral form, once a referral has been accepted a 'Set-up' meeting is held where the service run through the guidelines & ‘permissions’ for family time* with the parents/adults, SW & SCW, where one is allocated. It is expected that the SW will supervise the first contact as part of the risk assessment & to enable the SW to give us guidance as to how to manage the contact going forward. Once the service takes over the supervision there is an expectation of regular Review to provide discussion & feedback as to how contact is going & to address any differences of opinion. (Contact Centre Leaflet for parents) Referrals from other Local Authorities In addition to referrals from Bromley’s Social Workers the service will accept referrals from other Local Authorities. If we are requested to provide a supervisor, the same principles apply as above. Room only bookings The service accept room booking ‘only’ requests from outside services. There is a standard room booking form. Bookings are only taken up to 8 weeks at a time as in-house supervised contact takes priority. Repeat bookings will be taken where we have capacity. *family time is sometimes referred to as contact.

Families in private law proceedings Whilst we do not currently take referrals for families who are in private law proceedings this is an area that we plan to develop in the future. Community based contact Community based contact can only take place on the advice of the Social Worker; or following a risk assessment by our service for families in private law proceedings.

Quick Do’s & Don’ts for Supervised Contact Workers A ‘Summary Form’ is created on our database (EISi) for every family attending contact. This provides information such as the names of family members allowed, or not allowed to attend; names & ages of children; importantly what has been agreed they can or cannot do in respect of photos, gifts, calling family members, etc. This form is ‘dynamic’ & will be updated to reflect any changes. The referral form & any other documentation such as Set-up Forms &/or Working Together Agreements will also be uploaded to EISi. The Summary Form should be a Supervised Contact Worker’s first point of reference before supervising a contact.

Prior to Family Time Before you supervise family time ensure you have read the Summary Form & you're clear on who is expected to attend. Read the previous contact records so that you can follow up on any advice or issues raised. Ask questions if you are unsure of anything. Ensure you are ready to welcome the family before the start of family time. Ensure the room is set up with age-appropriate activities, the Support Worker will assist with this. Your safety - know where the panic buttons/emergency exits are & ensure that you place yourself near to them. Professional Boundaries Always remain polite & professional. Avoid becoming overly friendly or developing a friendship with parents. Do not place yourself at risk by disclosing personal information about yourself, your family, where you live, etc.

Don’t offer to do things for parents e.g. change nappies, tidy up etc, or enter into long conversations that detract time away from the family time.

Issues that may arise... Issue: Parent focuses on one child & ignores the needs of the siblings Solution: encourage parents to do a group activity ensuring you record their response to your suggestions. Issue: Parent appears unable to interact with the child/children Solution: ensure parents are aware of the equipment available and help them to find an activity that they and the child can enjoy together. Issue: Parent makes or receives a call & passes phone to children Solution: this is not acceptable and should be stopped immediately - only those designated by the Social Worker can attend or speak to the children. Issue: Parents talk to you about their problems or issues with the Local Authority or Carers Solution: encourage their focus back on the child/ren. Whilst parents need to feel listened to & often feel disempowered, advise them to raise their issues outside of family time with their Social Worker or Solicitor & draw their focus back on their children. You should not offer your opinion & should always remain neutral.

Hints and tips when dealing with difficult situations...Supervised Contact Workers need to recognise any risks or harm & intervene appropriately to de-escalate the risks, at times this may require family time to be terminated. When parents are emotional or angry try to take them to one side so that the child is not exposed. Offer the parents the opportunity to take 5 minutes out from family time to compose themselves. If their behaviour deteriorates again, consider the effect it is having on the children. You may need to advise the parent that family time will be ended for that day. If the parent cannot be calmed, request assistance as soon as possible. Don’t react defensively & take criticism or hostility personally. Acknowledge their frustrations. If they have been given insufficient information, had contacts cancelled, delayed, or cut short etc then apologise & let them know that you will raise this with your manager after family time has finished.

Always keep your voice even & level whilst maintaining eye contact. Never mirror their anger or frustration by raising your voice or adopting a similar physical stance. Wherever possible give positive feedback about their relationship with their child. Be careful not to apportion blame or appear judgemental in any feedback that you give. Parents can be very determined to give their children information, sitting next to them with the TV turned up, whispering or wanting to accompany them to the toilet, (if you are a male worker concerned about entering the female toilets with parent & child (or visa versa), contact the office, do not let them go unsupervised). If a parent continues to try & whisper at further points during the contact after you have advised them to stop, then the contact must be terminated. Please see the Terminating Contact Policy document. (Click here to view)

Community based contact Ensure you have a charged mobile phone & that you have the relevant contact details for the Centre / Manager on duty & remember that you can also use the WhatsApp emergency group. Don’t lend parents money – if it’s a hot day and the parent has not brought any money, it’s ok to buy them something, but do not hand the money over to the parent. Keep your receipt so that you can claim this back. Whilst the child’s emotional & physical safety are paramount, if you find yourself in an unsafe situation confronted by an aggressive or violent parent wanting to take their child, DO NOT attempt to intervene physically. Seek assistance as soon as possible – either from colleagues, &/or by calling the police (999) & the allocated Social Worker/team manager (outside of our core hours & at weekends call the out of hours Duty Social Worker). Make sure you explain clearly that the child is in the care of the Local Authority. Where a risk assessment requires this the CCCS have lone working devices to ensure the safety of staff, please ensure these are used where there are deemed to be risks. Lone Working Policy

Report Writing Supervised Contact Workers will need to complete detailed reports from notes taken during contact supervision providing evidence of attachment & general parenting ability, suitable for submission in Court Proceedings. There is a requirement that write-ups should be recorded within 48 working hours & sent to the SW/relevant Business Support Officer to upload onto Liquid Logic. It is the expectation that the SW will read these to inform their assessment. Remember that your reports provide essential evidence for Court, so you must mention any difficulties the parents may encounter. You can offer to give relevant feedback to parents including any areas where they need to focus on change, make sure you record what advice was given & the response from the parent. On rare occasions a Supervised Contact Worker could be called to Court as a witness in proceedings, should that happen, they would be supported via their Line Manager. Please see guidance for completing contact observations.

Report Writing

Standard practice when case recording The standard of recording is that we use people’s names throughout the recording. At the start of the recording, you would need to write their full name & who the person is & then continue this with just the name i.e. Gill Downton (Team Manager) spoke to Rachel Dunley (Head of Service) about a compliment that came in about a Supervised Contact Worker. Rachel was delighted with the compliment & asked Gill to send her a copy so she could personally thank the worker.

In a scenario where you feel that it is not appropriate to refer to a family member or professional by their first name then you can refer them as Ms Downton & use the same format as above. Please always use spell check! There is also a Read Aloud & Dictate function in both Word & Outlook that can help with reports.

Quick Steps to finding Info on EISI before you do anything: firstly, have you changed your 'user preferences'?

Yes? then you're good to go! no? then click on the 3 dots (top right of your screen)

click edit and change 'my cases' to 'people' & hit save.

log out of eisi & log back in again to ensure changes

person search: quick search: enter (eisI) system reference number into the search box on the Navigation bar & press enter or just click the to access the full search box

this will bring up a list of names & addresses which you can scroll down to see if the person is known - once you find the person click on the 'Sys Ref' number to open their basic profile info

*use wildcard (%) if unsure of spelling

is it an open case?: there are 2 places that tell you a family is an open case:

at the top of the page when you open a person profile (if this doesn't appear then it's not an open case)

to look at who is involved then click here: (relationship & Prof involvement)

then scroll down the page to early intervention team allocation for the name of the FSPP

underneath you'll see the names of any other agencies involved

finding the info: contact records ...if you want to see contacts for all family members click 'family group ref' if you just want to see names of family members click 'family maintenance'

if you just want the most recent contacts on the person you searched click 'running record'

...then click on 'running record' again to see all the contacts

can you see everything?:

at the top of the running record column it will tell you the number of records there are (some will be limited) so...

change the number to the exact amount or add a higher random no. hit search! all the records will now show for you to explore

click here on the down arrow

finally, useful forms to view (running records) Supervised contact summary form Supervised Contact Observation Set up meeting for supervised contact Review supervised contact

ccCS record against the relevant parent & relevant child(ren)

TO find any of the above forms - you can perform a simple search using the filters type in consecutive characters from any part of the form title*

Accident Report Form Occasionally things go wrong, & we need to complete an AR3 form (speak to your Line Manager) We MUST report: Accidents which result in injury, or are caused by defects in property or equipment; Near misses, which could have resulted in an accident; (please note this relates to employees, members of the public, volunteers, contractors, visitors, etc) Verbal abuse and threats to staff. If you are unsure whether an incident should be formally reported, then please seek advice from your line manager or Corporate Health & Safety on 0208 461 7454. Always complete this form as if it is for an external reader who does not know our service or how it operates as it must make sense to our Corporate Health and Safety colleagues and any other reader. If the incident took place during family time the details within the AR3 should echo the narrative in the Contact Record.

Useful Links

Health & Safety Top Tips for completing AR3 forms

If there is anything that you are unsure of or if you just have a question...feel free to speak to your line manager in the first instance.

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