Quality Improvement & Workforce Development

Children and Youth Services

Signs of Safety Implementation Briefing

Fact Sheet

Background

Children and Youth Services (CYS) in Tasmania is undertaking a process of formally adopting and embedding the Signs of Safety (SoS) approach to complement the existing Tasmanian Risk Framework (TRF) and to support an overarching Practice Framework for Children and Youth Services.

This project builds upon the initial adoption of the SoS approach and seeks to formally embed its use and application across the full spectrum of related services at all levels with an approach agreed with and supported by key stakeholders.

The implementation of the approach will be led by the Quality Improvement and Workforce Development unit (QIWD) with the development and management of the approach guided by a steering committee made up of Children and Youth Services partners.

The SoS implementation has been identified as a priority and agency resources have been made available to deliberately and actively implement the approach across all program areas within CYS. This will take the form of systematic staff learning and development, system development, support, monitoring and evaluation as well as liaison with key partners.

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Why undertake this work?

The introduction of the SoS across all CYS program areas at this time is opportune in terms of focusing Agency practice on engagement with children and families in line with evolution in sector thinking and as represented in recent changes to the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1997 in relation to supporting a less adversarial approach and more inclusive practice when working with children, families and other stakeholders.

SoS is an effective way for CYS to engage in a more open, honest and transparent way with children, young people, and their families. SoS is designed to create a shared focus and understanding among all stakeholders in child protection practice and to strive for risk sensible practice.

Risk sensible practice involves:

• Doing more slow thinking

• Asking questions rather than coming up with a plan

• Always striving for a balance in risk assessment

• Listening with an appreciative ear with families and colleagues

• Admit that you might be wrong or you don’t know

• Look for multiple perspectives

• Know when to stop information gathering and make a judgement

• Make your judgements transparent and open

• Learn from our mistakes without blaming

What is Signs of Safety about?

SoS seeks to create a more constructive culture around child protection organisation and practice. Central to this is the use of specific practice tools and processes where professionals and family members can engage with each other in partnership to address situations of child abuse and maltreatment.

Three principles underpin SoS:

• Constructive working relationships between professionals and family members, and between professionals

themselves, are the heart and soul of effective practice in situations where children suffer abuse • Critical thinking and fostering a stance of inquiry deliver best results in child protection practice • Landing grand aspirations in everyday practice depends on key learnings from worker and client descriptions

of good practice in complex and challenging cases

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Completing the SoS assessment and planning is, in the end, simply a process of creating a map of the circumstances surrounding a vulnerable child and avoiding risk assessment occurring in isolation from families.

SoS has evolved and continues to do so through the application of practice-based evidence, appreciative inquiry (AI) into practitioner and recipient-defined best practice. Building a culture of appreciative inquiry and research around frontline practice is critical in this regard.

SoS grounds these aspirations in an assessment and planning process that is to be integrated with the TRF to create a revised Tasmanian risk assessment tool.

Disciplines for using Signs of Safety: • A clear and rigorous understanding of the distinction between, past harm, future danger and complicating

factors • A clear and rigorous distinction made between strengths and protection, based on the working definition that

‘safety is regarded as strengths demonstrated as protection (in relation to the danger) over time’. • Rendering all statements in straight-forward rather than professionalised language that can be readily

understood by clients • As much as possible all statements focus on specific, observable behaviors (e.g. ‘Mary is not taking prescribed

medication or attending appointments with the psychiatrist’) and avoid meaning laden, judgment-loaded terms (e.g., ‘she is controlling’, ‘he is in denial’, ‘she’s an alcoholic’)

• Skilful use of authority • An underlying assumption that the assessment is a work in progress rather than a definitive set piece

Safety planning is designed to create a proactive, structured and monitored process that provides parents involved in child protection matters with a genuine opportunity, to demonstrate that they can provide the safety and the care for their children the statutory agency requires of them. A safety plan is a journey not a product; it must be re-visited and reviewed over time.

Where is CYS at with the implementation?

A project team has been established and tasked with the implementation and a comprehensive Phase 1 Implementation Plan has been created. A SoS Project Steering Committee has been appointed to steer the project and we have consumer involvement in order to ensure that the child and family’s perspectives are included at this level.

Recently, our Practice Leaders (and members of the Executive Leadership Team) were given intensive training in the SoS approach. We are currently in the process of training all staff in the SoS approach as well as undertaking initial work on the integration of SoS into the TRF.

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The priority for Phase 1 of the project is to embed the approach within Child Protection Services and to ensure that all other programs are provided with learning and development in relation to the approach in order to develop a shared language across CYS.

We are currently in the process of informing key partners as to how we intend to develop the SoS approach at an Agency level and what will this mean to our partners as the practice approach evolves.

Partner Involvement

Integrating the SoS approach with CYS systems and process may mean we need to make changes to some of our interactions with our partners.

We are undertaking a process of ‘touch point mapping’ in order to review how and where we interact with our partners, the current prescribed processes involved and working through how our external processes might change.

Preliminary discussions are being undertaken by the Project Manager in conjunction with the QIWD Manager to inform key partners of this development and it is expected that there will be ongoing discussion as we progress through this work.

Limited training opportunities in the 1st year of implementation are being made available to key staff outside of the Agency in order that they can familiarize themselves with the SoS approach.

As the implementation progresses information will be available through a regular newsletter to key stakeholders.

I have more questions?

If you would like further information in the first instance please contact:

• SoS Project Manager: Shane Hayes Shane.Hayes@dhhs.tas.gov.au

• QIWD Manager: Angela McCrossen Angela.McCrossen@dhhs.tas.go.au

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