A field guide
Acronyms I pretended to understand
Social work runs on acronyms the way cars run on petrol. Here are the ones you will hear in your first month, in plain English, with commentary.
The book has a glossary at the front. This one is longer, and new. A few entries are borrowed from the book, and are marked.
It describes England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own law and their own words for things.
It is not a textbook. If you are revising, check everything here against something with footnotes.
- ABEAchieving Best Evidence
A video-recorded interview with a child, led by a specially trained police officer, so that the child tells it once, properly, and the recording can be used in court. You wait outside. It is the longest wait there is.
- Agency
A social worker employed through a recruitment agency and not by the council. Better paid, easier to let go, and often the person who has been in the team longest.
- ASYEAssessed and Supported Year in Employment
From the book
What NQSW year is officially called. Sounds reassuring. It is not.
- CAFCASSChildren and Family Court Advisory and Support Service
The organisation that provides Children’s Guardians in England. The Guardian is appointed by the court to speak for the child, and has their own solicitor. If the Guardian disagrees with you, you will find out in the corridor.
- CAMHSChild and Adolescent Mental Health Services
NHS mental health services for children. Excellent once you are in. The waiting list is its own safeguarding concern.
- Care orderSection 31, Children Act 1989
An order made by a court that gives the local authority parental responsibility for a child, shared with the parents. Only a court can make one. It has to be satisfied that the child is suffering significant harm, or is likely to, and that the harm comes from the care they are getting.
- Chronology
From the book
Timeline of everything that has happened. Takes forever to write. Nobody reads it. Essential for court.
- CINChild in Need
A child who needs extra help from services to be healthy and to develop as they should. Section 17. Voluntary, which means the family can say no. Most of the children a social worker works with are here, living at home.
- Contact
Time a child in care spends with their family. Now more often called family time, which is kinder and takes longer to type. It can be supervised, in a room with beige walls and a box of toys with pieces missing.
- Core group
The small group of professionals and family members who meet between child protection conferences to make the plan happen. Somebody always forgets to book the room. It is usually you.
- CPChild Protection
A child who is suffering significant harm, or likely to. A child protection plan says what has to change, who is going to do it, and by when. The family do not get to say no to this one, though nothing works unless they say yes to some of it.
- DBSDisclosure and Barring Service
The criminal record check. Everybody who works with children has one. Takes three weeks when you are not in a hurry and nine when you are.
- Disguised compliance
When a family appears to be working with you and is not. A term that gets used too quickly. Sometimes what looks like disguised compliance is a frightened person agreeing with everything so that you will go away.
- DNADid Not Attend
Written in the notes when somebody misses an appointment. For a child it should say Was Not Brought, because a four-year-old does not decide whether to go to the dentist.
- Duty
Being the worker who picks up whatever comes in that day. You do not know what it will be. It is never nothing, and it is never at ten in the morning.
- EDTEmergency Duty Team
From the book
The people who answer the phone at 3am when everything goes wrong. Heroes in fleeces.
- EHCPEducation, Health and Care Plan
A legal document that sets out the support a child with special educational needs must get. Parents who have one have usually had to fight for it, and will tell you.
- EPOEmergency Protection Order
A court order to keep a child safe when there is no time for anything slower. It lasts up to eight days and can be extended once. A magistrate or a judge makes it. A social worker cannot.
- FGCFamily Group Conference
A meeting where the wider family makes the plan, with the professionals out of the room for part of it. Aunties turn up. Things get said. It works more often than you would think.
- Genogram
From the book
Family tree diagram. Like ancestry.com but with more domestic violence.
- Guardian
See CAFCASS. Not to be confused with a special guardian, who is a relative or friend bringing up a child under a court order, or with the newspaper, which has views on us.
- ICPCInitial Child Protection Conference
The meeting that decides whether a child needs a child protection plan. A dozen professionals, one family, and a chair who runs the room like air traffic control. The parents are outnumbered. The good chairs never let them feel it.
- IROIndependent Reviewing Officer
Chairs the reviews for children in care and checks that the council is doing what it said it would. Can be the best friend a child in care has. Employed by the same council, which is where the word independent has to do some work.
- LACLooked After Child
A child in the care of the local authority. Children in care have asked us, repeatedly and fairly, to stop calling them LAC, because it sounds like lack. Most places now say child in care, or care-experienced. The forms have not caught up.
- LADOLocal Authority Designated Officer
The person you ring when the worry is about an adult who works with children: a teacher, a carer, a coach, one of us.
- MASHMulti-Agency Safeguarding Hub
The front door. Police, health, education and social care in one place, deciding what happens to each referral. Nothing to do with potatoes, or the television programme, though there is a similar amount of gallows humour.
- NFANo Further Action
The decision to close something without doing more. Often right. Sometimes the three letters somebody looks back at years later. Also stands for No Fixed Abode, which can make a file very confusing.
- NQSWNewly Qualified Social Worker
From the book
The first year after qualifying, when you are simultaneously expected to know everything and trusted to do nothing.
- PEPPersonal Education Plan
The school plan every child in care has. At its best, the one meeting where somebody asks the child what they are good at.
- PLOPublic Law Outline
In everyday use, the stage before court. The family get a letter saying what has to change, and a meeting with their own solicitor beside them. Parents who get that letter are entitled to free legal advice whatever they earn. It is a last chance, and it is meant as one.
- Police protectionSection 46, Children Act 1989
The power the police have to move a child to a safe place, or keep them in one, for up to 72 hours, without going to court first. Police officers have it. Social workers do not.
- Pool car
From the book
Shared vehicle for home visits. Smells of disappointment and other people’s lunches. Usually a Fiesta.
- PRParental Responsibility
The legal rights and duties of a parent. Mothers have it from birth. Fathers have it if they were married to the mother or are named on the birth certificate, and can get it in other ways. A care order shares it with the council. It does not take it away.
- Section 17Children Act 1989
The duty to support children in need and their families. Covers everything from a parenting course to a food voucher on a Friday afternoon.
- Section 20Children Act 1989
When a child is looked after with their parents’ agreement and without a court order. The agreement has to be real. A parent with parental responsibility can say no, and can take their child home. Courts have been very clear with councils about what happens when that is forgotten.
- Section 47Children Act 1989
The duty to make enquiries when there is reasonable cause to suspect a child is suffering significant harm, or is likely to. The point where help becomes an investigation, and everybody in the room can feel it.
- SGOSpecial Guardianship Order
A court order that lets a relative or friend bring up a child until they are eighteen. Grandparents, mostly. They did not plan to be doing the school run at sixty-three and they are magnificent.
- Significant harm
The threshold. The law does not define it with a number, so people have to decide. Most of the hardest arguments in this job are about which side of this line something falls.
- Strategy meeting
Police, health, school and social care sharing what they know about a child and deciding whether to start child protection enquiries. Usually called at short notice. The child does not know it is happening.
- Supervision
From the book
Regular meeting with your manager to discuss cases and not cry. Sometimes you cry anyway.
- TAFTeam Around the Family
Early help. Everybody who knows the family gets round a table before things are serious enough for a social worker. If it works, you never hear about it.
- Threshold
The test for whether something is serious enough for a service to act. There is one for early help, one for a social worker, and one for court. People on the wrong side of a threshold still need something. That is the part the word hides.
- Trauma-informed
Asking what happened to somebody before you ask what is wrong with them. A good idea that has been put on a lot of lanyards.
- Voice of the child
What the child thinks, wants and feels, recorded in their own words. A box on every form. The test is whether the child would recognise themselves in what you wrote in it.
One I have left out
Please tell me. Send it in, with or without your own definition. The best ones get added.