Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership Staff received two Awards in the Scottish Association of Social Work (SASW) Awards for Best Practice in 2017. 

The Award for Social Work Team of the Year was won by the Partnership’s Family Group Decision Making Team, with a highly commended for the same award for the Partnership’s Families for Children and Asylum/Roma Team.

The Awards were presented by Childcare and Early Years Minister Maree Todd MSP on Tuesday, 20 March. In Edinburgh. Maree Todd recognised the dedication and achievement of social workers across Scotland. She said: “The examples and stories that were shared on the night are reflections of great work which supports and protects people as well as the communities they are part of…We know of the current pressures facing social workers and their employers, so work of this standard is amazing and very uplifting. The professionals and teams nominated tonight make us proud to be social workers in Scotland.”

The Family Group Decision Making Team (FGDM), was established in March 2017 and introduced a new approach to prevent children and young people becoming “looked after and accommodated” as well as reducing the need for long term statutory social work intervention. It is based on involving families and the community in a very active way in making the relevant decisions about “getting it right for a particular child”. Examples of work describe “last gasp attempts before children were removed” where both children and parent’s needs were looked at leading to a comprehensive family plan allowing the children to remain at home.

Pat Togher, Head of Children’s Services, North East Locality who nominated the team said:” Since its inception last year in the North East Locality I have been extremely impressed by the commitment displayed by the Family Group Decision Making Team. This is a team who have truly embraced partnership working across all agencies and especially with families who require additional support, reducing the need for long term statutory involvement. The team have now received 287 referrals and in a significant number of these cases prevented young people being received into care accommodation, generating considerable efficiencies including financial savings of £650,000 in the first 10 months of the project.”

Pat continued: "The Family Group Decision Making process is complemented with Extended Family Network Searching (EFNS) which has produced very impressive results since its introduction. In the first 10 months the EFNS discovered 1929 family members from 119 searches therefore producing considerable more scope to support young people within the family.”

In light of the success of FGDM in the north east locality the decision was taken to expand the service and roll out across the whole of Glasgow meaning that many more children and families will experience the positive results of this model whilst helping re shape the way we engage with families. This is particularly impressive considering that the team has been operating for less than one year and demonstrates the pace and commitment in achieving results."

Highly commended for the Social Work Team Award was the Families for Children and Asylum/ Roma team, Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership.

This service was formed in response to a home office request to all local authorities to take a number of young unaccompanied asylum seeking young people but interestingly in today’s stretched environment was established without additional funding. Two teams undertook the additional work and assessed families who expressed an interest in accommodating young people.
The most significant challenge of this work for the team was working through and assessing the number of families who expressed an interest in accommodating the young people.  This was only achieved by them developing close working relationship with relevant partners while also cultivating interest and offering support and training to families approved as suitable. 

The team recognised the value of involving some of the young asylum seekers that had previously arrived in Glasgow as part of this work. As such a group of them were involved in the selection panel deciding on the suitability of prospective families.  Given their previous insight in the process of being settled in a foreign environment, the young people’s contribution has and continues to be an invaluable asset to the team members carrying this work forward. 

Aileen Shaw, Service Manager, Families for Children said: “It is clear that working with such vulnerable, traumatised young people requires to be handled sensitively and with a significant amount of delicacy.  Given the pressurised work that the Families for Children and Asylum /Roma team in Glasgow are already dealing with, it is highly significant that they have successfully managed this work while creating a process which can be successfully applied when future circumstances require.”