Making a referral

If you wish to make a referral, please download the Safer Referral Form and complete all relevant sections prior to contacting us. Please follow the instructions on the form for the procedure to be followed.

Based on the SAFER (Situation-Assessment-Family-details-Expected-response-Recording) communication guidelines developed by the Department of Health in liaison with safeguarding experts, this SAFER referral tool will help ensure appropriate, quality and effective referrals of children in need or children who may be suffering (or are likely to suffer from) significant harm to social care services.

You should use this SAFER referral tool to guide both your verbal and written communications with the Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Children's Hub. This will ensure a uniform approach to communicating to the Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Children's Hub the level of risk posed to a child. You can then send the completed from to the Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Children's Hub as a confirmation of your referral.

By working through this document before making a call you will ensure that you have the necessary information to hand.

Unless good quality information is provided to the Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Children's Hub it will not be possible to make the right decisions and provide the right services to a vulnerable child. 

 Before you make a referral to children's social care ask yourself these questions:

• Is there a social worker allocated? Have I discussed this referral with that social worker?
• Has an Early Help Assessment Framework been followed? Have I attached this to my referral?
• Have I assessed the child and documented my findings?
• Have I documented existing risk factors or issues?
• Is there any evidence of substance abuse, domestic abuse, mental Illness, a chaotic lifestyle or missed appointments?
• Where do I feel the child's needs are on the above continuum of need?
• Has the situation been discussed with the child's parent(s)?
• When did this happen?
• Have parents provided their consent to the referral?
• Do I know who else is in the child's household?
• Have I updated myself on the children's recent involvement with our service?
• Do I know whether or not the child has any siblings? May they be at risk of harm, too?
• Has the situation been discussed with a manager/senior colleague for safeguarding?

By completing the attached questions before making a call you will ensure that you have the following available:

• A list of recent events
• The evidence triggering the call

Hartlepool Borough Council