Children’s Services were preparing to close a case that they deemed low risk. However, after looking on ECINS, they saw other agencies had identified significant safeguarding concerns and the family were recorded as high risk.
Seeing the full picture of vulnerability across multiple services allowed Children’s Services to secure support at a crucial time and save the life of the child involved.
The Case:
A case was reported to Children’s Services relating to a family who were being subjected to abuse from local children, and a low-level ASB case was entered on ECINS.
The case started to escalate when an 8 year old boy threatened the victimised family with a knife. This 8 year old was from a family who had recently moved into the area and very little was known about them.
Children’s Services were unaware that there were high levels of domestic abuse in the family home. This involved the step father as a perpetrator and the boy and his mother as victims. They were also unaware of the mother’s serious mental health issues, regular hospital admissions, frequent overdoses and drunk reports.
At this point, Children’s Services had identified the family as low risk on their own system because they were unaware of the wider picture.
The Impact of ECINS
After accessing ECINS, Children’s Services were able to see a comprehensive view of vulnerability and understand the severity of the situation.
When the 8 year old boy’s case was introduced and escalated, the high-risk domestic abuse in his family home was established. Then, a referral was made to the local Family Intervention Programme, who discovered the mother’s serious mental health and substance abuse issues.
As the case developed, information from several agencies began to build a picture of increasing risk within the family, including concerns relating to domestic abuse, mental health and child welfare. These concerns were recorded on ECINS, allowing Children’s Services to see the emerging risk profile and respond accordingly.
A quick, comprehensive report was able to be compiled because ECINS stored all the information in one place. Within one day, this Children’s Services case went from low level to being classified as a high-risk case that involved a social worker sleeping at the address that night.
ECINS was instrumental in both identifying the true level of risk and enabling a rapid multi-agency response. By bringing together information from different services in one place, it significantly reduced the time required to assess the situation and coordinate intervention.
This timely access to critical information was crucial, as there were genuine fears that the situation could have resulted in a fatality.
Andy Solomon, ASB Network Manager based in Ipswich said:
“The information collated on ECINS was vital in producing a report to Social Care which helped in identifying that more intense help was needed. ECINS was key in the information sharing process and the use of ECINS in this case may well have prevented a serious case review having to be carried out.”
