What can I expect from a family worker

Support begins with a request for help, which may have been submitted by you or someone who knows you. The Council processes this request and will inform you if it is accepted.

A family worker will be assigned to you either from the Council or from one of our Family Hub Network partners.  Your family worker will call you to introduce themselves and arrange to meet with you.

An assessment helps us find out what support your family needs, as well as what is working well for you.

The assessment questions aim to guide conversations between you and your family worker so that they can understand your needs. The assessment will ask the views of every member of your family.

The family worker’s role is to coordinate with others to make sure you get the help you need.  This help will come from a variety of places.  Your family worker will arrange a meeting with you and invite other professionals. This is called a Team Around the Family (TAF) or Network meeting.

Your  (TAF) meetings will be relaxed and will aim to get the best support for you and your family.

You should be involved in planning the meeting, like deciding who you think should attend. This might be professionals who already know you such as school staff or health practitioners. You might also like to invite others who support you, like friends or extended family members.

Your family worker will always make sure you know in advance who is going to be at the meeting and what is planned to be discussed.  They will do all they can to support you and to make sure you feel able to have your say.

The TAF meeting aims to agree on the help which can be offered to your family, including when and how this will happen.

Your family action plan will identify the next steps to making a positive change in your family life.  The plan will outline who is expected to do what and by when.  Some of these actions will be things that you or members of your family have agreed to do.  Some of them will be things other people have agreed to do to help you.

The TAF meetings will happen regularly, about every 4 to 6 weeks.  At these meetings, you will review your family action plan and everyone will report on the actions they were supposed to do.  This means that everyone takes responsibility for what they say and that you should start to see things improving.

As things start to get better for you and your family,  you might not need as much help as you were getting to start with.

Eventually, the family worker will end their work with you, but before they do, they will make sure you have a good support network, and ensure you know how to access help again if you need to.