Family Solutions Service

The Family Solutions Service (FSS) supports families across Oxfordshire. Our work with children and their families includes Early Help support like Team Around the Family (TAF) and Early Help Assessment (EHA). It also includes statutory planning within Child in Need (CIN), & Child Protection (CP) frameworks. Where necessary we undertake court proceedings to safeguard children.

Seeking support for your child(ren) or family? You can access help from your GP, school, or search for support on the Family Information Service website.

The service is delivered from eight Children and Family Centres and other venues

Family Solutions Plus Model

Family Solutions Service is founded on and overseen by a strong multi-agency partnership including District Councils, Public Health, key statutory partners and local voluntary sector partners including Oxfordshire Mind, Elmore,Turning Point and Connection Support.

Our domestic abuse, mental health, and substance misuse adult–facing practitioners are embedded in our social work teams and have been directly commissioned by the local authority from voluntary partners.

Multi Disciplinary Teams

Our multi-disciplinary teams work with families to get to the heart of  their difficulties  - our adult-facing practitioners work with parents/carers to support them with addressing unmet needs to increase their parenting abilites .

Strengths-based practice model

Our workers are trained in working with families to understand why we are involved, and build on family strengths using motivational interviewing to build rapport and promote change 

Reducing bureaucracy

The family Workbook enables holistic and purposeful work with families based on a modular approach to assessing parenting capability whilst reducing social workers’ recording. 

Relationship-based

Every family will be assigned one social worker who will work with them throughout assessment and intervention; one worker; one assessment; one meaningful intervention to ensure sustainable change.

We have created 17 locality-based multi-disciplinary teams across Oxfordshire delivering support and intervention to families where they live.

Teams are comprised of social workers, adult-facing practitioners and children’s practitioners, who work directly with children and their parents, delivering evidence-based interventions and programmes in response to assessed need.

We are changing our focus to working with, not at or to, in line with our restorative practice principles. We engage families and promote change through motivational interviewing.

Our work with every family is reviewed, considered and evaluated in family group supervisions to allow all practitioners involved an opportunity to review progress, define outcomes achieved, and collectively agree current risks and needs, so that risk is shared.

Family Solutions Services

We work closely with partner agencies to provide a range of services including support around parenting, domestic abuse, school readiness, and more. Specialist services include:

• EET Service for young people not in education, employment and training
• Specialist substance misuse support for young people from Cranstoun Here4YOUth
• Family Group Conference Service which supports family and friends to be involved in decisions being made about a child
• Family Time Team which helps children not living with their family stay in contact with family members
• Parenting support such as Family Links (primary school parenting support), Take 3 (adolescent parenting support) and Own my Life (Domestic Abuse support)
• Targeted Youth Support Service TYSS support for children and young people aged 11-18 who are having difficulties in their life. Our support extends to anyone aged up to 25 with an EHCP or who has been part of Children We Care For.

Family Solutions values and service aims

• We are family focused, determined to improve outcomes for the child in the family contact
• We aim to provide the right support at the right time to help children & families overcome their difficulties
• We aspire to ensure that every child not able to live with a parent is safe, secure and nurtured, supporting meaningful connections with families and communities
• Integrated, multi-disciplinary and connected services from the “front door” to specialist services
• An approach supporting social workers and practitioners to deliver meaningful interventions and create lasting change
• Children are supported within their own family/community wherever possible: their identity and sense of belonging are nurtured & respected
• Dynamic, creative, ambitious and sustainable multi-disciplinary teams