Our Vision
In RCT we want to ensure all children and young people have the best start in life and can learn and grow safely. In Children’s Services, we recognise sometimes children and families need additional support to achieve this. Establishing relationships based on our values, we work alongside children and families, building on strengths to enable positive change, whilst always prioritising our role in keeping children safe.
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RCT’s values and vision has been developed collaboratively with practitioners.
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Our Values
Family
We promote children's right to a family life. We will always work to the ethos ‘family first’ and will think widely about what family might mean to a child.
Support
We support families to get the right help at the right time, we step up support, step down support but don't step away too soon.
Respect
We respect people's unique individuality, their circumstances and choices, and involve young people and their families in our work and decisions about their lives and circumstances.
Family Strengths and Safeguarding
We work on strengths and are clear with people about risks, and the outcomes we are working towards.
Stability
We promote stability for looked after young people and know that they will need specialist help during their journey.
Pride
We take pride in the achievements of the people we support, and the work we do with them.
Improve
We are curious about how effective our work is and are always ready to improve and innovate.
Compassion
We recognise the many adverse experiences that can impact on people using our services, including trauma. In our interactions, we show understanding, empathy and sensitivity alongside a desire to help.
Our Teams
All social work roles in Rhondda Cynon Taf share the same core job description, we have a range of teams specialising in different areas of social work, the information below introduces you to our teams and outlines the different areas of work and specific requirements.
Contact us for information regarding other posts within Children’s services.
Information, Advice & Assistance and MASH
The Information, Advice and Assistance Team (IAA) is the first point of contact for all public and professional enquiries to RCT Children's Services. The IAA Team establish whether there is a need for the provision of information, advice and assistance or the investigation of safeguarding concerns.
Where safeguarding concerns are identified, the referral will be assigned to the Cwm Taf Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH). MASH provides a framework for partner agencies to work together to best support and safeguard children by sharing and analysing information that is held about them.
Our IAA and MASH Teams work closely together, ensuring we act quickly and appropriately to ensure the best decisions are made for children and young people.
Resilient Families Service
The service focus is early intervention and prevention, it has been designed to provide the right support at the right time, to deliver swift resilience focused assessments, to remove practical barriers to positive change and to provide timely, appropriate, and effective interventions.
Find out more about the Resilient Families Service
Enquiry and Assessment Teams
The Enquiry and Assessment Teams provide assessment and signposting to ensure families receive the right level of support. Where needs are identified requiring the involvement of statutory services, an outcome focused care and support plan is developed. Practitioners work with families until the initial Child Protection Conference.
Family Support & Care Planning
Child and Family Teams
Our Child and Family Teams specialise in care planning for children who require care and support. This includes cases subject to child protection planning, PLO and Court, in addition to adoption work. A dedicated service enables more focus on risk management to avoid escalation. The overall aim is to reduce the need for PLO, child and family separations, and care proceedings.
Children Looked After Teams (CLA)
Our Children Looked After Teams are dedicated to working collaboratively to improve the opportunities and outcomes for care experienced children as a priority. Our teams support and facilitate positive change to enable young people who are looked after to exit the care system sooner, into safe and stable environments, which may include reunification back to birth family, leaving residential care, and stepping down into foster placements. We want our children looked after to experience safe, healthy, and nurturing relationships with the people who are most important to them. Our teams aim to achieve more purposeful, good quality family time that will allow children looked after to maintain strong birth family connections and relationships, giving them a firmer sense of identity throughout their childhood.
14+ Teams
Our 14+ teams provide specialised support to young people aged 14-25 who are looked after, living at home with family, experiencing homelessness or care leavers, empowering them to develop sustainable life skills and independence. We also work with Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) ensuring they receive the support, guidance, and safeguarding that is tailored to their needs.
Our goal is to deliver a service that improves the opportunities and outcomes for teenagers and care experienced young people as a priority, providing a more stable experience throughout their journey in care. Transition planning into adulthood is a key focus of our work, we work with partner agencies to ensure that young people exit care at the right time for them, with the most appropriate support and accommodation available to them.
Disabled Children’s Services
The Disabled Children’s Service has a brand-new way of working to better enable disabled children and their families to meet their personal outcomes and provide targeted support.
The team supports children and families who have a permanent and substantial disability, taking them through the assessment process and providing targeted support through preventative services or care and support planning as appropriate. Identifying and managing any safeguarding risks and having responsibility for disabled children who are looked after.
Magu
The Magu Team supports people who are expecting a baby from 10 weeks of pregnancy through to when the baby turns one, to provide individual support. Magu works with both mothers and fathers, who:
- Have been in care themselves
- Have other children who are not in their care
- Are first time young parents
The support Magu could offer includes:
- Support with practical parenting skills.
- Helping to attend meeting and appointments.
- Support you to learn about your baby.
- Help with access to other support service
- (e.g. Drug / alcohol services, housing support, mental health support).
- Support to gain confidence as a parent.
- Support to overcome your own challenges or adverse experiences.
Fostering, Residential & IFSS
Foster Wales Rhondda Cynon Taf
Foster Wales RCT is the Local Authority’s Fostering Service (re-branded as a national brand in 2021) and provides a range of approved foster placements for children from the local community aged between 0 to 18 years of age. The service has 4 teams:
- Foster Wales’ Regional Recruitment Team
- Foster Wales Assessment Team
- Foster Wales Mainstream Support
- Foster Wales Kinship Support
Find out more about Foster Wales
Residential
Our Residential Services provide care and support to children and young people between the ages of 6-18. Residential staff teams are committed to providing stable and positive environments which improve lived experiences and provide positive opportunities to those who are unable to live with their family at the current time. Individual plans are designed to facilitate reunification or support the development of life skills in preparation for independent living. Our residential teams are trained and supported to deliver trauma informed care and support. Our Residential Service also provides respite to children and young people who have disabilities.
Find out more about our Children’s Residential Service
Integrated Family Support Service (IFSS)
Our IFSS consists of Supporting Change, Therapeutic Families Team and Family Time Service. Supporting Change deliver intensive evidence-based interventions with the aim of helping parents/carers and children to achieve behavioural change that improves parenting capacity, helps create stability at home and enables them to care for their children.
Interventions are delivered through:
- Individual work directly with children and their parents
- Activities both within and outside the home
- Practical support
- Parenting Programme
- Working with the extended family
The Therapeutic Families Team (TFT) is a multi-disciplinary team consisting of Systemic (Family) Psychotherapists and Educational Psychologists who offer consultation, therapeutic assessments and evidence based specialist interventions to children, families, and professionals, with the aim of preventing child-parent separation or placement breakdown.
The Family Time service provides supervised opportunities for children to spend time with their families where this is an assessed need, primarily during family proceedings. The focus of the service is to promote meaningful quality time for children with their families in a safe and suitable environment, where a more organic arrangement is not appropriate at the time.
Partnerships and Safeguarding
Independent Reviewing Team
Independent Reviewing Officers (IRO) are qualified, experienced social workers working in the Reviewing Team. IROs are responsible for chairing Child Protection Conferences as well as Children Looked After Reviews. They seek the child’s view and monitor the progress of Care and Support Plans to ensure needs are being met.
Cwm Taf Morgannwg Safeguarding Board
The Cwm Taf Morgannwg Safeguarding Board (CTMSB) is a statutory partnership made up of the agencies that are responsible for safeguarding children and adults at risk in the Cwm Taf Morgannwg area.
The Board ensures that agencies in the region have effective arrangements in place to ensure that people of all ages, living in the region, are protected from abuse, neglect or other kinds of harm. This also involves preventing abuse, neglect or other kinds of harm from happening. The CTMSB monitors how well agencies and other partnerships undertake their work with regard to safeguarding children, young people and adults at risk and ensures safeguarding is embedded in all working practices.
Children’s Services staff can develop their skills and contribute directly to the work of the Board, through attendance at various sub-groups on engagement and participation, policies and procedures, quality assurance, training and learning etc.
View more about the safeguarding service
Cwm Taf Youth Justice Service
The Youth Justice Service (YJS) is a statutory multi-agency partnership responsible for preventing offending and re-offending in Rhondda Cynon Taf and Merthyr Tydfil. The service works with children who enter into the youth justice system via the Law Courts, who are dealt by way of an out of court disposal (OoCD) or involved in anti-social behaviour (ASB). Alongside partners within Children Services and other partner agencies across the Cwm Taf Region, the YJS incorporates a prevention service that works with a significant cohort of children and young people to prevent them from entering into the criminal justice system.