No Clear Sign

MICHAEL SANDERS, the Chief Executive of What Works for Children’s Social Care talks about the systematic review that looked at Signs of Safety which is a whole system model for children’s services in England.

According to the review founding, Signs of Safety is not ineffective but it doesn’t have many effects on reducing entry to care.

Moreover, there is another research one by Dr. Baginsky and the Department for Education about the evaluation of the Signs of Safety roll out to nine local authorities. Unlike the systematic review, this research covered a much wider set of impacts from Signs of Safety such as colleagues from King’s, local authority partners, and with substantial input from MTM (now Elia), the organization which oversees Signs of Safety globally. So, the research found the following points:

• There wasn’t much evidence to suggest that assessments are completed more quickly under Signs of Safety than otherwise. It’s hard to know whether this would have been a good thing – a quick assessment needn’t be a better one.
• There wasn’t any moderate or high strength evidence of an effect of Signs of Safety on the rate of re-referral to children’s services, nor the rate of re-referrals that are followed by the case escalating.
• There was a significant reduction in the use of kinship care in local authorities using Signs of Safety.
• The writer also emphasized that beyond some unclear implication the main result is that using Signs of Safety is probably safe to continue, but that anyone thinking of starting should probably pause for thought.