Outreach Work and Contact with Ex Residents

Contents

1. Outreach Work
2. Contact with Former Residents

1. Outreach Work

Working in a therapeutic community provides a robust framework within which to work safely. Outreach work is likely to be short-term, involve many strands and working with people outside our framework; this will require co-operation and fine tuning to succeed whilst keeping everyone safe.

Initial meetings will set out the goals of the work and objectives within the timeframe agreed, and how this will be reported. It is vital to ensure that all communications are clear and jargon free to  maintain a level of understanding by everyone of the purpose of the outreach work.

It will necessitate good recording of all meetings and sessions, and regular briefings with all agencies involved. This creates a safe environment for the work to take place, and staff will receive regular supervision for this specific piece of work to ensure all are working within professional boundaries.

2. Contact with Former Residents

When children/young people leave one of our homes, wherever possible they will have been well prepared and enabled to make this transition as smoothly as possible.

We strive to facilitate appropriate attachments and relationships with both peers and staff, these relationships are important to children/young people and maintaining them can contribute to their resilience and future wellbeing. However it is crucial that this contact occurs in the context of the work we do and needs to be carefully thought about.

Any ongoing contact needs to benefit the child/young person and be appropriate to whatever setting they have moved onto.

When a young person asks to keep in touch the following points should be considered:

• Awareness of whose needs are being met;
• Contact should be discussed by the staff group;
• Caution should be exercised in relation to making commitments that may not be able to be kept (e.g. the frequency of contact);
• Clear boundaries are essential;
• Contacts should be known about by the staff team (i.e. in the diary, discussed in supervision, reported on in staff meetings and recorded in ex-residents contact records);
• Staff should always be bound by the boundaries of their professional role.

The member should ensure that the child/young person's social worker and Local Authority has agreed to any contact with the ex-resident. The staff member will not be acting on behalf of Childhood First.

Remembering that every contact requires considerable thought, whilst maintaining professional boundaries will ensure that any meeting will be contained and safe for both staff member and the child/young person. The context will be appropriate and meetings ongoing if deemed beneficial.

Contact includes every form of communication, including emails, phone calls, texts and Facebook etc.

Staff should not have direct contact with a child/young person via social media or via their personal or work e-mail address or via their mobile number. All correspondence should be via the home's telephone or mobile number.