The Resilient Families’ service has been operational since January 2018 and provides the Team Around the Family arrangements in RCT. It is the Council’s recognised approach to delivering the early intervention and prevention agenda across RCT.  Resilient Families Service provides the opportunity to deliver swift, effective, consistent and bespoke support to families.

The Service has been designed to identify the right families in need of support at the right time, to provide swift resilience focused assessments, to remove practical barriers to positive change and to provide timely, appropriate and effective interventions. The Service aims to deliver improved support to families in quicker response times; shorter and sharper diagnostic assessment; a trusted single point of contact and pro-active practical support to engage with interventions designed to increase resilience levels.

How does it work?

The Resilient Families service is part of Children’s services and consists of the following four teams:

• The Assessment Brokerage and Review Team provides a timely response to referrals by undertaking proportionate assessments that are focused on a family’s resilience levels. The information gathered will be used to inform a Family plan that aims to build a family’s resilience levels and remove any barriers that are limiting positive change. This plan will include effective short term interventions to support families to make practical and sustainable changes.
• The Families Plus Team works with families from across RCT identified as requiring intensive intervention following the initial assessment i.e. where support for complex or entrenched needs is required. These families may have been stepped down from Children’s services intervention or have been referred to the IAA (Information, Advice and assistance) but did not meet the threshold for statutory Children’s Services intervention. The Families Plus Team consists of intervention Workers who will deliver a short term intensive package of support to families in order to build positive engagement and reduce risk levels.
• The Children with Additional Needs service (CANS) Team works with families across RCT where the neurodevelopmental, cognitive or physical impairment needs of their child(en) are below the statutory threshold for intervention and the family requires specialist support to understand and manage their child’s needs and/or address the impact this is having on the wider family. The CANS Team consists of intervention Workers who will provide short term intensive bespoke packages of specialist support to families that focus on developing strategies to improve the quality of family life.
• The Families Team works with families from across RCT identified as requiring early intervention following assessment i.e. where co-ordinated multi-agency support is required. The Families team provides a central point of contact and advocate for families; direct support; and works alongside other partners to ensure that the intervention plan is effectively delivered.

For more information on the Resilient Families Service please contact 01443 281435 or  rfs@rctcbc.gov.uk

The New Referral mechanism for Resilient Families Service: 

Referrals can be made to the Service via the Information, Advice and Assistance (IAA) Team in the following way:

• Families can self-refer for Resilient Families Service by phone (01443 425006) 

All referrals will be ‘triaged’ by the IAA Team for allocation according to risk/need.  Referrals received by the IAA Team that do not reach Children’s Services threshold but are deemed appropriate for intervention will be allocated to the Resilient Families Service. Emails will be read during office hours only Monday – Friday between 08:30 – 17:00