Social care support for children with SEND
Family Help and high needs
Family Help and high needs services are for children and young people with complex or ongoing needs.
Family Help teams
Family Help teams provide intervention to support your family through crisis or at difficult times.
Family Help teams take a layered approach:
- The first layer of support comes from the Core Family Help team
- The second layer of support comes from services aligned to Family Help teams
Core Family Help team
The Core Family Help team can consist of:
- Social workers
- Family practitioners
- Intensive support workers
- Domestic abuse workers
- Child protection experts
- Children with disabilities social workers and family practitioners
- Intervention experts
- Occupational therapists
This Core Family Help team will:
- Listen to you, your child or young person and your family network
- Complete a needs assessment. This could be a social care assessment or an early help assessment depending on your level of need.
- Provide a range of appropriate interventions and support
Services aligned to Family Help teams
Services aligned to Family Help teams provide the secondary layer of support. This team can consist of:
- Family time team
- Designated social care function
- Enhanced family help team (neglect)
- Personal advisors
- Adolescent family help team
- Substance misuse workers
- Preventing homelessness team
- Therapeutic service
- Targeted youth support service
- Community assessment team
- Pre-birth and recurrent care team
- Court work experts
- Court work facilitators
- New roads and crisis outreach
The services aligned to Family Help teams will step in as needed to provide flexible and responsive support as your family needs change.
Children with Disabilities (CWD) teams
Children with Disabilities (CWD) teams are part of Family Help Teams. They support:
- Children with severe, profound or multiple disabilities
- Children who need long-term specialist support
CWD teams also provide:
- Visits to your family
- Advice on SEND and disability
- Specialist workshops
How to request support from Family Help Teams
Contact the children's advice and duty service (CADS) by calling 0344 800 8020 and following the options for children's social care.
How we decide the level of support
Once you CADS, they use the Norfolk Continuum of Needs Guidance to decide your level of support.
This guidance is for children and young people in a wide range of situations. It focuses on what is the best way to support the child or young person.
