Children’s services departments sometimes receive information from someone worried about the safety of an unborn baby. This information is called a referral. Anyone can make a referral if they are worried about a child or unborn baby. So, a referral may come from a member of the public or a family member. It can come from someone involved with the family or child. This could be a teacher, health visitor, the police or a GP for example.
When they receive a referral, children’s services should decide certain things within one working day (see Working Together to Safeguard Children at page 30, paragraph 71). These things are:
- Whether to start an assessment.
- And if so, what type. This could be a:
If children’s services have received a referral from your partner’s GP, then this would lead to a social worker from children’s services getting in touch. It is not unusual for the social worker to want to start an assessment. This is called a pre-birth assessment.
A pre-birth assessment is carried out in much the same way as any other social work assessment except that it is completed before your baby is born. This assessment will aim to find out whether your family need/will need additional support. And whether your baby will be safe when they are born. The social worker will speak to your partners midwife and any other relevant health staff when doing their assessment of your family situation.
There can be different outcomes to a pre-birth assessment. The outcome will depend on whether your unborn baby is assessed to require additional help as a child in need. Or if there are concerns that your baby will be at risk of harm once born.
If, after the assessment, the social worker is worried your baby may be likely to suffer significant harm, after the birth, an initial child protection conference may be held while your partner is still pregnant.
But the social work may decide to arrange a child in need meeting instead if they think:
- Your baby will not be at risk
- Your family and your baby will need some extra help and support from different practitioners and services.
It is very important that you, as the expectant father:
- Work with the social worker to find out what the concerns are and how these concerns may affect your child
- Respond to those concerns
- Find out what you and your partner can do (or what help you can be offered) to help keep your baby safe within your family.
As soon as possible you and your partners should think about whether there is anyone else in the baby’s family who is suitable to look after your baby if you cannot. You can ask for a family group conference. This is a family-led planning meeting. It brings family and others who will be important in your baby’s life to make a plan to keep them safe and supported once born. You can read more about family group conferences on our Family group conferences: advice for families page. This includes short films and helpful infographics to explain the family group conference process.
Pre-proceedings
If the concerns about your unborn baby are so great that children’s services think your baby may not be safe when born, they may begin a pre-proceedings process. Pre proceedings is the process where children’s services consider whether to start care proceedings. If they decide to do this, children’s services must send you a letter before proceedings.
This letter should include:
- Information about what children’s services are worried about
- Changes they would like the parent or carer to make
- Information about any assessments or courses children’s services think parents should be involved in
- Any support children’s services can put in place
- An invitation to a ‘pre-proceedings meeting’ to discuss those concerns.
See our Pre-proceedings page for more information.
Court proceedings
If children’s services think the situation is urgent or your child is unsafe, they may begin court proceedings. See our Care (and related) proceedings page for more information.
Important: If either a pre-proceedings process or care proceedings are going to begin it is very important to urgently find a solicitor:
- You may want to post a question on our Parents Forum to receive advice from one our expert advisers, or for further advice or complex situations you may want to
- Contact us – call Family Rights Group’s specialist legal and practice advice line on 0808 801 0366 (the advice line is open Monday to Friday, from 9.30 am to 3 pm excluding bank holidays).