Signs of Safety
The Signs of Safety (SOS) Approach
Thurrock has adopted Signs of Safety as their way of working with families because it is helping to support them to achieve the type of service that children, young people, parents and carers have told them they want. Best practice is child-focused, solution-orientated, respectful and inclusive of families.
Signs of Safety was developed in child protection services, so this is the umbrella term that is used for the approach. When using Signs of Safety within different services it is adapted to those situations and it is known as:
- Signs of Wellbeing at prevention and early help (CAF)
- Signs of Safety at child in need and child protection
- Signs of Stability for work with cared for children and young people and care leavers
Signs of Safety Framework
- What's working well?
- What are we worried about?
- What needs to happen?
Safety/Wellbeing Scale – After completing what is working well, what we are worried about and what needs to happen, family members and agencies are asked on a scale of 0 to 10 where they rate the situation right now.
Danger/Worry Statements & Safety/Wellbeing Goals - These are compiled with agencies and families to clearly state what the current risks are and what it will look like for the children to be safe. They are used to help shift thinking from the future we worry about to the future we want to create.
Core Principles
Signs of Safety for Thurrock means:
- we listen to what the children say
- we place high value on the quality of relationships we have with families, carers and each other
- we think critically and never assume we have all the answers
- we work with families collaboratively to help them find their own solutions
- we use plain language that families can readily understand
- we balance optimism with curiosity so that we assess risk rigorously
Children and Young People
We use Signs of Safety to help children and young people talk about things that go well in their family as well as things that worry them. We try to use different methods to help children tell us how we can keep them safe.
Further Information and Resources