10
Colum Benstead & Mairead Davey
a Strengths Based Approach
It was a different approach from my
previous experience with social
services and it made us feel that we
had some control in the decision
making process.
(Family involved with Gateway)
0
30
60
90
120
Referrals into Gateway
Referrals into Gateway
Telephone Other Referrals
It's great to see that from the earliest
point in the process, social workers
are looking for strengths and
networks and it begins the journey of
working restoratively with families.
(CAFT Senior Social Worker)
Aim
Improve strengths based
information gathered at
referral by Lisburn
Gateway from 0% to 80%
by October 2019
What are we doing and why?
We aimed to incorporate a strengths based
approach at the earliest point of contact with
children and families. We shifted focus to include
gathering information at Gateway about the
strengths within the family, the networks of
support already available to them, alongside
information about the concerns and worries.
Referrals collected by Gateway on the telephone
tended to be incident focused and invariably
negative. Our approach is in line with the regional
implementation of Signs of Safety. Twenty
telephone referrals were randomly sampled from
the previous six months and none had strengths
recorded within the referral. Consequently our
baseline was zero.
Outcome Measures
SOS Telephone Referrals April to August 2019
PSDA1 Peer approval of new referral form
PSDA2 Education of Staff
PSDA3 Pilot in Lisburn Sector
PSDA4 New Documentation developed to support staff
PSDA5 Expanded to Down Sector
PSDA6 Expanded to Ards Sector
Next Steps
• Changing the Trust's online UNOCINI referral form to mirror
the signs of safety referral form being taken on the telephone.
• Undertake training with external referrers around making a
referral into Gateway using the Signs of Safety referral form.
• Further training for Single Point of Entry staff around taking
referrals.
Taking Referrals at
Gateway Using
Median = 9.3
UCL
0
5
10
15
20
25
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Number of Referrals
Week
SOS Telephone Referrals including Strengths Based
Information