Very soon after talking to a social worker from Family Connect a Children’s Social Worker and a Housing Officer will arrange to meet with you. We call this meeting a Joint Housing Assessment. The purpose of this is to determine if you are homeless or not and what help you need immediately. They do this assessment together so that you don’t have to keep speaking to lots of different people and between them will be able to answer any questions you have at this time.

Following this meeting the social worker will need to do a Child and Family Assessment. This assessment finds out more about you and your family and is our way of trying to understand what is happening in your life and what help and support you need so that we can put the right plan together with you.

The social worker will ask you what you think about your circumstances, how you feel, what your worries are and what you want to happen. All of this is a very important part of the Child and Family Assessment. So it is important that you meet with and tell the social worker what is going on for you – not just about the difficulties you are facing but also what in your life is going well because they will want to help you strengthen this.

They will need to ask you some questions about why you can’t live at home and will likely want to speak to somebody in your family to see if we can help you to get things sorted out at home, if it is safe for you to do so.

This assessment takes a little longer that the Joint Housing Assessment. We will make sure you have a safe place to stay whilst the assessment is taking place. It could be finished within 10 days but should never take longer than 45 days.