30: Children’s services, social distancing and COVID-19

Social distancing measures and lockdown has made it difficult for practitioners to provide direct contact to children and families. Other than occasional doorstep visits, check-ins are no longer face-to-face but take place through video and telephone calls. How are practitioners ensuring that children and families’ needs are still being met?You'll hear from a children’s services practitioner about: the pressures of lockdown and the long-term impact, including looking out for concerning signs of abuse and neglect how they’re working with multiple agencies to meet different children and families’ needs and distributing resources for parents and carers potential child protection issues that may emerge as we transition back to pre-lockdown life how children are being supported to understand current issues in a child-friendly way next steps for delivering services virtually, such as group work programmes. Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website.💬 About the speakerDannie Adcock-Habib is a Children’s Services Practitioner at the NSPCC’s Grimsby Service Centre and a qualified social worker who is involved in undertaking Family Focus assessments. She delivers the NSPCC’s Building Blocks service and Young SMILES service (Simplifying Mental Illness plus Life Enhancement Skills).📚 Related resources> See our resources for children and families at risk> Find out more about the Together for Childhood programme> Learn about the effects of toxic stress on child developmentIntro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros