Children and Young People

Reading Children’s Social Care provide a range of services for children, young people and their families. We have a legal duty under The Children Act 1989 to help and protect children in need. We undertake an assessment to determine the support a family may require to promote a child or young person’s health and development.

We provide support and advice when a child is:

• in need because their family is in crisis
• in need because a parent has a disability
• abused or at risk of abuse or neglect
• disabled or has a serious illness
• cared for away from their family
• in need of support after leaving the care of the local authority
• lacking family support or homeless
• emotionally and behaviourally distressed or in trouble with the law

Working Together
We aim to support families to bring up their children and prevent family breakdown. We have a lead responsibility for protecting children from harm. We do this by working together with other organisations that enable families to provide good standards of care for their children and to help them find the best solution if they need extra support and services.

We work in partnership with, among others, parents, relatives and carers, health workers, teachers, youth services, the police and the voluntary sector:

We realise that contacting the service usually comes at a difficult time and often when families are experiencing problems. Our staff recognise this and offer support to children, young people and parents in the most sensitive way possible.

We are a professional team who can offer support for a short period or will arrange for longer term support when necessary, either from ourselves or by arranging appropriate help from our other teams in Services for Children and Young People or other agencies.