Signs of Safety (SoS)
What is Signs of Safety …
Signs of Safety (SoS) is designed to help children, young people and their families participate more easily and effectively in social work, build safety for children and young people at risk of significant harm, help professionals assess risk more effectively and to help make plans with children and young people and their families.
What happens at the SOS meeting? …
SoS style meetings may be held for a variety of reasons. Meetings will usually be led by a member of the Children and Young People’s Service whose job is to ask questions of those at the meeting, including the child or young person and their family, in order to draw out an understanding of the child’s or young person’s situation. The discussion will centre around strengths, dangers, safety and making plans for the future that meet the needs of the child.
To make sure that the information shared in the meeting is properly understood it is recorded on a large whiteboard or projected on to a screen so that everyone can clearly see and comment.
The information is recorded in three columns exploring the following key questions:
- What are we worried about?
- What’s working well?
- What needs to happen?
At most meetings everyone will be asked what they feel about the current situation of the child or young person. The question will usually focus on the issues that led to the meeting being held, so if regarding the safety of the child, participants, including the child and their family, will respond to the question on a scale of 0 (child is unsafe) and 10 (child is safe). This is referred to as a scaling question and is used to help generate discussion and highlight differences in opinion and perception.
At the end of the meeting there will be agreement to what the next steps should be to help the child meet their
needs, what the family goals and agency goals are with regard to the welfare of the child.
A record of the meeting will be given to everyone who attended the meeting.
Where can I find more information? …
North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership www.safeguardingchildren.co.uk
About the Signs of Safety approach www.signsofsafety.net (NYSCP not responsible for external content)
Forms for Initial Child Protection Conferences, Review Child Protection Conferences and Child Protection Conference Reports for Medical Practitioners can be found here:
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