The Family Support Team (FST) is part of the Disabled Children's Team. The team work across Richmond and Kingston.
The role of the team is to:
- Support referred children and young people through named allocated staff case holding.
- Assess the needs of children and young people, identify and arrange services to meet those needs.
- Support children and young people to have the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers.
- Review and monitor services provided to families we support.
- Design, deliver and monitor support programmes such as behavioural management, reward systems or communication tools to assist children and families open to us.
Eligibility Criteria for this team
After a Social Care assessment has taken place the Disabled Children's Team can transfer/allocate cases to the Family Support Team if a child or young person:
- is eligible for support from the DCT Social Work Team;
- has no current safeguarding concerns;
- is not looked after or leaving care;
- has no more than 24 sessions of overnight care per year.
Cases can transfer back to DCT should there be any new safeguarding concerns or significant changes which require a social work reassessment and oversight.
Co working
In some circumstances, children can be referred by ISCD social workers to the Family Support Team for short term co-working to address particular issues for example; behaviour management.