Strategy Meetings

A strategy meeting happens where concerns have been raised about the safety and/wellbeing of a child or children within your family. This can be a referral from somewhere like a nursery, a school, a GP, a hospital, or anybody (professional or otherwise) who is worried that your child is not safe or being looked after to a good standard. It can also be when a crime has taken place, or there has been an emergency admission to hospital.

The social worker will convene a meeting between children’s services, the police, and any professional involved with your family such as GP, midwife, school, CAMHS, community psychiatric nurse etc. Parents and children are not invited to these meetings and don’t usually get any notification that they are going to happen.

The purpose of the meeting is to decide whether to begin a child protection assessment (known as a Section 47), a child in need assessment (known as Section 17), or whether more support services need to be put in place.

As a parent, this all feels very cloak and dagger, and I, for one, would like to see parents involved at least on some level with meetings like these. There’s not really any preparation you need do for these meetings, but you should be informed as to the next steps, or outcomes.