Children’s social care consultation event

3 mins read

Tuesday 1 August 2023

Tags: social care, special educational needs, SEND Consultation, safeguarding

The government is currently consulting on changes to its social care statutory guidance called Working Together to Safeguard Children in England.

We want to make sure families with disabled children can share their views and experiences on these proposed changes, so we asked the Department for Education to set up a consultation event.

Have your say on 17 August

To book a place on the online event taking place on Thursday 17 August (11am-12pm), visit the Eventbrite page.

If you can’t attend but still want to contribute your views on supporting and safeguarding disabled children to our consultation response, please email our health lead Amanda on amanda.elliot@contact.org.uk. 

The government has also announced which local pathfinder areas will be testing new ways to delivering children’s social care. This is part of its response to recommendations from the Independent review of children’s social care.

What is Working Together?

Working Together is guidance that organisations in England must follow to promote and protect the wellbeing of children. It covers both the regular support disabled children get from social care services, as well as safeguarding and child protection processes.

What are the issues?

Social care is consistently the third most common inquiry to our helpline. Often we hear from parents whose child was refused a needs assessment or was assessed and then faced delays getting support.

Research has found parents with disabled children often feel humiliated and blamed when they sought help from social care services. More rarely, disabled children may be subjected to care orders when the crisis could have been averted with much earlier social care support for the family.

Alongside disabled children’s social care experts, we are concerned that proposed changes do not address these challenges families are facing with the assessment process.

In his blog, Luke Clements, Cerebra Professor of Law at Leeds University, describes issues with the draft guidance

Share your views

If you want to contribute you views on supporting and safeguarding disabled children to our consultation response, please email our health lead Amanda on amanda.elliot@contact.org.uk.

You can also share your views directly on the government website (you don’t need to answer every question) before 6 September 2023.

Visit our social care webpages to find get advice on how to go about getting social care support for your disabled child.