RESTORATIVE PRACTICE FAMILY BASED DECISION MAKING SERVICE

The Scottish Government’s 2021-22 Programme for Government committed to investing 500 million GBP of Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) over the lifetime of the Parliament to support the development of holistic whole family support services. It also set out the ambition that by 2030, at least 5% of community-based health and social care spend should be going towards preventative whole family support measures. East Ayrshire H&SCP are committed to ensuring we get it right for our children and families. We want to ensure that our families have the supports they need to live and thrive together. For some, this will require the support of committed, skilled individuals who can build on the family’s existing strengths and resilience in a manner which feels right for each family. The aim is to provide direct support to families while working within local cluster services, to achieve more consistency in identifying and responding to families’ needs. This has the potential to lead to better understanding of agency roles, improved multi-agency working and a more confident service delivery. It is hoped that as early identification improves, help would be offered to families earlier, resulting in a reduced number of referrals upwards into area social work teams. In the long term, it is anticipated that resources will be used more effectively. Ultimately, a lower number of children and young people would become the subject of a Child Protection plan, or require to become Looked After. The aim is to develop a more flexible, multi-disciplinary approach to working with families to help them solve their problems within their own communities. RES teams will respond to the various levels of complexity in the presenting needs of children, young people and families which may exceed the early help or cluster offer, but would not require a child protection response from social work fieldwork teams. We are therefore looking to commission the services of a flexible, multi-disciplinary team to support this project. Additional information: Please note that the indicative value of this contract over a 3 year contractual term is still be be set.