Welcome to ‘CASS’ the Children's Accommodation & Support
Service. These pages should provide you with brief
information about the service, its customers, principles, values
and practices.
Who the service is for
The Children’s Accommodation & Support Service, working in
close partnership with a number of commissioned support
agencies, provides a broad range of specialist community
based support services, care placement options & family
supports, designed to meet the needs of our most vulnerable
children and their families, including:-
- Children on the edge of care
- Children in Residential Care
- Children in SEN Residential Schools
- Children who are Leaving or have left Care
These four principal service delivery areas are coordinated by
the ‘CASS Management Network’ and supported by a cross-agency
partnership ‘Team Around the Child’ with representation from
Vulnerable Children’s Services, Area Social Work Teams, Health,
Mental Health, Drug & Alcohol Services, Education, Youth
Offending, Police and the Voluntary Sector - working together to
ensure the best possible outcomes for children and their families,
many of whom have experienced significant life challenges
How the service is arranged
These arrangements are designed to manage demand, and build a
personalised package of services for each child and their family in
need, delivering the consistent realisation of positive outcomes -
including safety; security; nurturing; education; resilience
building; social learning and personal development.
This structure chart explains how we manage the service.
Our Values & Key Principles
Underpinning the National ‘Every Child Matters’ key service
delivery requirements around staying safe; Being Healthy; Enjoying
& Achieving; Making a Positive Contribution and Achieving
Economic Wellbeing, we believe that to ensure consistent good
outcomes for children and their families, services should be
Individually Personalised; Flexible and Available; and promote
Active Choice; Stability; Healthy living; Learning opportunities;
Resilience and Aspiration for all.
Continual review, along with considerable investment and
development over the past few years, has provided a programme of
consistent improvement to our caring environments, staff training
& qualifications.
Married to our programme of independent close monitoring from the
Suffolk Safeguarding Children service, and by involving children,
families, partner providers and other stakeholders in our
development journey we have created and realised a service we can
and should all remain proud of.
Leo Flatters - Head of Service
Who uses this Service?
The needs of children using these services are immeasurably
diverse. Some will be challenged by learning difficulties or
disability, some will have experienced significant abuse and harm,
many will have experienced rejections and exclusion, some will need
support as they move into adulthood, and some may be criminally
active.
Our primary task is to place each child and their family at the
centre of everything we do. Our focus is on creating positive
outcomes by helping each child and their family to understand their
circumstances better, to learn, to build their resilience and to
develop and realise their own positive aspirations in their life
journey.
Children on the edge of Care
The Family Assessment Support Team (FAST) is a new service, set
up during 2007.
Linking with the development of the national social care agenda
for preventative services; our aim is to work directly with
children and their families, within their own homes and
communities.
We aim, through our short-term interventions, to positively
divert a significant number of Children ‘from the edge’ of Local
Authority care (11-17 age range), into positive engagement with
their families and supporting professionals, in order to maintain
their place within their own home.
There is more information about FAST here
Residential Care
We are fortunate that we are able to provide a wide range of
placement and support options for children, delivered by five
children’s homes. On the linked pages, there is information for
children who use our services.
Woodman's Place is a short-term Children's Home for a small
group of adolescents from anywhere is Suffolk. Here, we
complete an assessment of needs, designed to facilitate and support
a pathway to permanence. This will usually target a positive return
home, but in some cases may be with a substitute family or
electively in a children's home where they can prepare for
independent living.
Grange Road provides therapeutic ‘care and repair’ for the
small number of children, within the age range of 7-13, who
following their abusive and traumatic past have since experienced a
further breakdown in their foster or adoption placement.
Bury Children's Home and
Pakefield Road provide short to medium-term therapeutic
placements for teenagers. Working with both the children and
their family, our target is family reunification. Where this
is not possible, children are assisted to prepare for their future
life using a range of tools to increase both confidence and
appropriate life skills as they prepare for future independent
living. Both establishments have the benefit of an integral
‘Sorted’ flat, where children preparing to move-on to live
independently in the community, can learn, practice and ‘take
risks’ in a safe environment.
Redwood Lodge Children’s Home provides long-term placements for
a small group of children who have made an elective choice that
they do not wish to live within a substitute family and where there
are no realistic plans for reunification with their family.
Again, here children are assisted in their journey through care to
prepare for future independent living in the community.
We will shortly be adding information about SEN residential homes
to this area of the web site. We will also be including information
about the Leaving and After Care service.
How we help our children explains further the way that we work.
We are passionate about our work and outcomes for children…… we
hope that these pages reflect this.