6518 Referral to children’s social care: families’ experience & suggestions for improvement

Objectives Our hospital's Children and Young People's (CYP) safeguarding team provides support to staff to escalate concerns about a child's welfare to their local authority. This mostly commonly takes the form of a written referral to children's social care. The safeguarding team send all such referrals and establish their outcome. Referral to social care can be emotionally distressing for families yet little has been published about their experience. This study sought to explore families' views and experiences of being referred to children's social care by our hospital staff. Methods This study used a telephone questionnaire to explore the experiences of CYP and their families when a referral was made to children's social care. All referrals for under 18s in the one month study period were considered eligible. Referrals where no consent had been obtained, for Looked After Children and where the parent was in an inpatient psychiatric unit were excluded. Participants were phoned on different days and times if no response was received in order to maximise participation. A telephone interpreter was used when required. All responses were transcribed, coded and thematically analysed. Results Forty referrals were eligible for inclusion in the study with 17 (43%) contactable by phone. The majority of participants (71%) felt they had been given enough information about why the referral was being made and all but two were contacted by the local authority subsequently. Those who felt satisfied with the referral described being keen for support from the local authority. Those who expressed dissatisfaction felt that the reason for the referral had not been explained to them or disagreed with why the referral was needed. Almost two thirds (62%) said they understood what would happen after the referral. Several participants suggested that a contact number for further questions might have been helpful. Participants requiring a telephone interpreter (5/17, 29%) consistently suggested written information would have aided their understanding. Conclusion Our study explored the views of families about referral to children's social care, an area of safeguarding practice with limited published data. We have identified a number of potential improvements, including clear written information about what a referral entails and what families could expect to happen next. Future work will include detailed interviews with young people about their experience of referral to children's social care and the development of information leaflets for families at the time of referral.