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Contents   

1. Context and Scope
2. Procedure

1. Context and Scope

Children's home staff should take reasonable precautions and make informed, professional judgements about when to allow a child or young person to take a particular risk or follow a particular course of action.  Making choices, taking risks and learning from mistakes is part of growing up and it is essential to provide looked after children with the opportunities to take risks if they are to develop the skills needed to mature into well rounded confident adults. Like all other young people, looked after children need to be supported to 'learn through doing'.

Whilst it is normal for staff, like parents, to want to avoid unnecessary risks, excessive caution is unhelpful. Children and young people need to have the opportunity to take risks proportionate to their age. However, it should be remembered that when the choices a child makes are poor or the risks unacceptable, it will be the responsibility of children's home staff to assist them to understand and manage their own behaviour differently. Children should be helped to understand how to keep themselves safe, for example when outside the home and using the internet or social media. 

Risk assessment and management within social care and social work have become central to the way in which services are planned and delivered. Assessing and managing risk is, by the very nature of the task, a central part of the residential childcare context. Assessment is an activity that staff are continually engaged in, whether this is on a formal or informal basis. It is therefore a core skill of the residential childcare task.

What the following procedure aims to do is to ensure that assessment and management of risk is not only carried out but that it is accurately recorded, monitored and reviewed. In so doing this provides a framework and structure from which to take informed decisions. Overall the aim is to create as much safety and protection for all concerned.

The Children Act 1989, The Care Standards Act 2000 and the Children's Homes Regulations 2011, Associated Guidance and National Minimum Standards whilst not requiring an explicit procedure on risk assessment, nevertheless, govern that staff should have guidance on risk-taking.

2. Procedure

1.0	Each young person should have an up to date risk assessment of harmful behaviour. The appropriate form for completing this is held on the young person’s Daily Living File. Wherever possible, the risk assessment should be completed with the young person and, if appropriate, their family.
1.1	The social worker should be involved in helping to complete, monitor and review the risk assessment, particularly when the young person first moves into the home.  It is the social workers responsibility to in – put the document into RAISE.
1.2	The risk assessment should be continually reviewed and updated. The frequency of which, will depend upon the level of risk that has been assessed. For instance the strategies put in place to help a young person assessed at high risk will need more frequent monitoring and reviewing. A further example would be when new risk factors enter the young person’s life, for instance drug use, and then this also will need more frequent and regular monitoring and reviewing. In short, the risk assessment and management process should be continually responsive and dynamic to individual young people and their particular circumstance.
1.3	The risk assessment should inform the Placement Plan, which, in turn provides the framework for supporting, and encouraging young people to keep safe them and also to behave safely towards others.

End