FACT - Latest news

November 2019

An update from the Integrated Multi-Professional Early Support worksteam can be found under the useful documents section on this page.

It contains updates on:

• Front Doors and Local Pathways group
• Integrated Earliest Support in Communities projects
• Early Support Assessments
• DART
• Multi-Agency Forums (MAF's)
• IT Enabled Partnership Working

2 July 2019

Hungry Little Minds is the new Department for Education campaign that encourages parents and carers to adopt positive activities and behaviours to boost children's communication, language and literacy development.

The three-year campaign, which launched with social media and online adverts in July, aims to help parents understand that they have a massive impact on their child's learning. Reading, playing and chatting with them are simple things they can do to help them develop, even when they are too young to say much back.

Parents can access tips and activities from Hungry Little Minds Campaign and also search for activities in their area using a new postcode finder service.

Organisations are encouraged to support the campaign, share content on social media and link to the campaign website from their sites, making it easier for parents to get the latest advice.

15 March 2019

The FACT Executive Board signed off a consensus agreement which can be viewed under the useful documents section of this page.

The agreement sets out how the local authority, police and health services will work together within the FACT Programme to improve outcomes for children, young people and families.

Dear Colleagues

We are very pleased to announce that today (5 March 2019) as part of the Families and Children's Transformation Programme we will be formally launching our new way of working with enquiries and referrals into our MASH.  Over the last few months our partnership FACT Front Doors & Local Pathways Group and MASH colleagues have been looking at how the 70% of calls and emails that do not need a social worker assessment but do require support from early help  services are dealt with. Our new pathway for contacts is shown below and is based on a Blue-Red-Amber-Green or "BRAG" - rating system. A new Fast Filter swiftly sorts out those contacts that are either clearly (Red) or possibly (Amber) safeguarding concerns from those that are definitely not but need early help (Green) or are have come to the wrong place (Blue) and channels them to the right place for further action:

The new Early Support Hub function sits alongside the MASH (with staff working across both on rotation) and expands our support offer for those people contacting us for advice and guidance on what to do for a child in need of help and their family. The partnership is also pleased to say that joining the Early Support Hub from the 5 March will be colleagues from Children's Centres which will further develop our multi-agency early support offer for our youngest children. Our Early Support Hub team is following the "A-B-C" model of working which has also been endorsed by our partners:

This means that with every contact we will always offer our best advice and guidance, we'll always ensure the right person or team is put in place to provide lead professional support if needed and we'll smoothly transfer calls to our partners at the point of contact so callers reach who they need quickly without delay. 

Our highly regarded MASH and it's processes remain unchanged including around the application of safeguarding thresholds which remains with social workers with continued management oversight.  There is also no change to contact details so all colleagues should continue to use the existing MASH phone and email details as they do now.

Please share this communication widely with your colleagues.

This is a significant step forward, building on the success of our MASH and the development of our partners front doors - ensuring that all Wiltshire families thrive.

Regards

Terence Herbert

Chair of the FACT Board and
Corporate Director Children and Education

Healthy Me

Healthy Me is a free 10-week family healthy lifestyle programme for 7 to 11 year olds and their families. The 10-week programme encourages small positive lifestyle changes to become healthier, and reach and maintain a healthy weight. This is a very popular programme that is having great success.For further detail visit Healthy Me.

Get Wiltshire Walking

​Get Wiltshire Walking is a Public Health funded project which aims to ensure every community within the county has access to a FREE weekly led walk. Walking is the lowest risk of all physical activities yet produces massive benefits to physical fitness and mental wellbeing. This is a great way to explore your own local area and can be a really excellent way to make new friends and learn more about your immediate community.

Currently there are 26 weekly led walks in 18 locations throughout the county, there is no limit to the number of walks you may attend. Each walk has its regular starting venue on the same day and time every week. We try to vary the routes each week.

• Strider walks are almost continuous and last between 60 and 90 minutes across variable terrain and may contain some gradients.
• Stroller walks last between 45 -60 minutes with regular pauses and are on variable terrain.
• Starter Walks last around 30 minutes and are on flat stable terrain with frequent pauses.

After the walk many groups have coffee and chat together. Providing you are independently mobile and able to meet the physical demands of the walk everyone is welcome. Unfortunately we cannot permit dogs on the walk.

More information

WISC

Assists in the lawful and integrated sharing of information between partner organisations for the residents of Wiltshire. 

The WiSC will establish consistent and robust protocols and becoming a partner member gives reassurance that each partner is working by the same process. WiSC aims to provide the foundation for the sharing of personal information between partner members in the public, private or voluntary sector organisations.

The WiSC is accompanied by a Personal Information Sharing Agreement (PISA) which is a standard sharing agreement which details the reasoning, legal basis frequency and signed authorisation by those parties undertaking to share data.

Any organisation signed up to the charter is provided with access to a toolkit of documents to assist information sharing within their organisation and across partner organisations.

More information