Definition:
“Serious presenting problems that
impact upon a child's care and development and where the parent is
unwilling or unable to access appropriate supports to make positive
changes”.
In order to establish whether significant concern
about a child's well being is occurring two conditions are
required:
1. The problem is serious
and impacts on a child's care and development
2. The parent is unwilling
or unable to access appropriate supports to make positive changes
(This may include that a parent does access services, but does not
make sufficient change to improve the child's care and
development)
It is mandatory (CYFA 2005) to assess a child as
having significant concerns about wellbeing if:
-
A referrer's
identity is to be protected
-
Child
Protection is consulted because of significant concerns for the
wellbeing of the child
-
Information is
shared without consent for the purposes of risk assessment or
determining appropriate service
-
A referral is
received as a result of a child wellbeing report to Child
Protection
Unborn referrals
Under the CYFA 2005, Child FIRST/Family Services
may accept referrals about significant concerns for the wellbeing
of unborn children.
Consult your Team Leader whenever you are
considering an assessment of significant concerns about wellbeing
or a consultation with Child
Protection.
Consultations with Child
Protection
Family Services may consult Child Protection for
other purposes (s22). The IRIS service activity 'Child Protection
consultation' should always be indicated every time a consultation
occurs, irrespective of significant
concerns or not.
IRIS Listing at Child FIRST for Significant
Wellbeing referrals
Whenever a family is assessed as having
significant concerns for the wellbeing of a child, the family must
be recorded in Iris as "Significant
Concern about Wellbeing".
Not all families in the Loddon Campaspe sub
catchments are recorded on the Child FIRST client list as they
originate in local agencies. The agency which processes the
initial referral will record the family on their agency IRIS data
base.
In situations when the local agency referrals
become upgraded to significant wellbeing concerns, this status
needs to be noted on the Child FIRST data base. This will ensure
that priority and enhanced intake services can be offered in the
event of any subsequent referrals for the same
family/child.
The following processes will be followed to record
SWB referrals/status with Child FIRST:
-
Child FIRST
will maintain a list on IRIS of all catchment SWB cases. The
purpose of this is to gather a cumulative history in the event of
subsequent referrals. Child FIRST does not have a case
responsibility role when a case is referred to/allocated in a
partner agency.
-
If a case
becomes SWB in a local agency, CF is to be informed and registers a
client only (no case) on IRIS. The User code is to indicate SWB the
date and the agency name. This is only required for cases that have
not originated in Child FIRST -local agency referrals, including
all cases opened before 23 April 2007.
-
If the client
is already registered but closed at Child FIRST, Child FIRST only
inserts SWB, date and agency name as the User
code.
-
If the case
originated from Child FIRST and 'tracked', the Child FIRST IRIS
will be updated at time of DHS export and closure - Child FIRST
does not need to be notified of these cases.
-
Families are to
be advised of any registration communication between local agency
and CF.
Responsibility for practice decisions and
review of closures
The agency who has received the referral or has
case management responsibility at the time the decision is made, is
accountable for all case decisions and outcomes in relation to the
SWB family.
