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• Assessment and Early Intervention
• Children in Care and Care Leavers
• Early years and childcare
• Family support services
• Joint Agency Services
• Safeguarding
• Schools
• Youth offending
• Youth support
• Devon Children's Trust

Joint Agency Services

What’s Devon’s approach?

In Devon, our Joint Agency Service is a multi-disciplinary team, where professionals from health and community care work alongside qualified and trainee social workers, to achieve the best outcomes for children. Working as a social worker in this service means working with other social worker colleagues, as well as Learning Disability Nurses, Community Children’s Nurses, Occupations Therapists, Social Care Community Care Workers and professionals from the CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) teams. In addition, we work closely with colleagues in education.

Our services are divided into two areas of work:

Integrated Assessment. The function of this team is to manage integrated assessments of children’s needs, working in conjunction with some, or all, or the professional teams listed above. The focus is upon achieving agreed, desired outcomes for each child, through the formulation of appropriate care plans. We’re proud of how well our multi-agency teams work together, and much of this is facilitated by being located in the same offices, which enables much closer working between professionals. There are often quite tight timescales to work to and joint co-operation makes a big difference.

Complex Case Team. Social workers in this team undertake a range of complex case work where each case carries a high level of risk to the child, including Children in Care or Safeguarding cases. This could also include cases involving children with complex medical needs where social care issues exist within the family. Part of the assessment process involves the consideration of access to carer breaks, which can provide valuable respite to families of children with severe or complex needs. An approved toolkit which guides social workers through this assessment process is in place, which considers the level of need and service provision appropriate to the circumstances of the child and family.

The caseload weighting system, which manages and monitors individual social worker caseloads, including the volume and complexity, are used within these teams, helping to ensure that individual caseloads are manageable. We also operate a highly successful supervision policy, where all social workers have dedicated time on a one-to-one basis with their Practice Manager to share experience and discuss difficult cases or issues.

There are three Joint Agency Service regions covering Devon, making it essential that social workers can travel widely to support the needs of children and families being worked with.

Background to the Joint Agency Service

We are actively pursuing the modernisation and integration agenda with the NHS in our Joint Agency Service for children with special needs. These teams combine CYPS staff with health professionals across the county and have joint management arrangements.

A special need means a physical, sight, hearing, speech, learning, behaviour or mental health condition. In CYPS, specialist social workers, Health and Education work together to plan and co-ordinate services for children and young people 18 years and under who have special needs.

Find out more about Joint Agency Services.

Supporting Inclusive Educational Opportunities

All children and young people have the right, by law, to attend a mainstream school. Children with disabilities have had this right protected since 2001. The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act says that schools should make ‘reasonable’ adjustments to ensure that children and young people with disabilities can enjoy the same opportunities as other children. We aim to support schools in making this a reality.

Education support services work closely with social care colleagues in the Children and Young People’s Services and with Health Service staff, this is to support children and young people who may be vulnerable to failure or harm or at risk of failing to achieve their potential. We are committed to putting children and young people first and to listening to their views as well as to those of their parents and carers. Parents, carers and young people can find out more about our services below and by accessing the Devon Children’s Trust website.

Devon’s Vision for Learning launched in 2005, endorses the entitlement of children and young people to an inclusive education alongside their peers. Our strategy to support schools in the challenge of making inclusive education a reality, Excellence for All Children: The Development of an Inclusive Education System in Devon was also produced in 2005. It encompasses our SEN and behaviour support strategies.

Excellence for All Children underpins Devon’s Children and Young People’s Plan, designed to help schools and settings to achieve these key Government and County Council priorities:

• To raise the educational achievement of all children and young people.  
• To develop the capacity of schools and other educational settings to meet a wider range of needs, increasing their staffs’ confidence and skills in teaching children and young people with special and additional needs.  
• To ensure the greatest possible social inclusion.
• To enable children and young people to access the mainstream curriculum, wherever possible in schools serving their local communities.  
• To enable all children and young people to achieve the Five Outcomes of Every Child Matters: being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic well-being.

Special schools

Devon recognises the important role which special schools can play. For a small minority of children and young people a special school placement for some or all of the week is the most appropriate setting in which to meet their needs. We are working to provide opportunities for children attending special schools to learn alongside mainstream peers and vice versa, and to promote the interchange of staff between special and mainstream schools. Special schools are increasingly likely to provide ‘outreach’ services, offering advice and support to staff in the mainstream. They can therefore play an important part in the ‘continuum of provision’ we aim to provide, in order to support all children and young people’s access to an inclusive curriculum through which they can achieve success and enjoyment.