Work in children's social care - meet our team

Nigel Minns

Executive Director for Children and Young People

My role involves overseeing the council's services for children, families, and education. I provide strategic direction and drive the organisation's activities. I collaborate closely with counterparts from the police, health services, district and borough councils, and other key strategic partners to achieve the best outcomes for Warwickshire residents.

John Coleman

Director of Children and Families Services

I am the lead social worker for Children's Social Care. My role is to work across the organisation with elected members and partner agencies to set the strategic plan for children's services and to oversee the day-to-day delivery of children's social care. The service areas I manage work together with families, helping them to build resilience and support the county's young people to be safe and well.

Marina Kitchen

Head of Service for Early Support and Children with Disabilities

My locality-based teams work with children, young people and families facing a range of challenges who may need some early, extra support to address their problems, get help and develop resilience to prevent formal or statutory interventions. These teams, include the Family Information Service, Youth and Community Centres, Early Support, Family Support Workers who deliver community drop ins, Early Support Officers who support the wider community deliver Early Help, and the Domestic Abuse team, deliver an approach that empowers families by giving them the tools to find their own solutions, seek wider support when they need it and help children to be safer, healthier and happier.

The Children with Disabilities Family Help team support children with severe and profound physical and learning disabilities to meet unmet social care needs. This support ranges from Targeted Early Help (held in the community) to Children in Care. Early Support for children with Disabilities is overseen from the Early Support team.

Calvin Smith

Head of Family Help

Family Help Teams are locality based multi-agency and multi-professional teams that work with families using a restorative practice method.  We work with families from the point of assessment until closure or transfer to the Children in Care Team. Families can receive targeted Early Help support, Child in Need support, Child Protection Services, care and pre-proceedings work, and we also support Children in Care until a permanency plan of long-term care is agreed. The goal of the service I oversee is to find family-based solutions to improve the experience and outcomes for children across the whole of Warwickshire.  To achieve this goal, we encourage all families to engage with the Family Network Service, so that they can help families formulate their own personalised plans. 

Sharon Shaw

Head of Service for Corporate Parenting and Migration

My role is to support children in care, care leavers and young people seeking resettlement by ensuring that they have the best possible opportunity to achieve their full potential, be safe and healthy and have access to good quality accommodation and positive relationships. Our Resettlement and Migration team also support families through the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

Vicky Woodfield

Head of Safeguarding Communities

Safeguarding communities work to keep children and young people safe from harm in and outside of their homes. Family Connect is our first point of contact for parents, carers or professionals and is designed to provide advice, guidance or support depending on the level of need or concern being raised.

The Multi-agency Child Protection Team (MACPT) makes all decisions regarding significant harm and the need for a strategy meeting, as well as manage all child protection functions. This team works closely with the Family Help and Family Adolescent Support Team (FAST) to ensure risks regarding children are understood, considered and consistent, and that proportionate decisions are made to increase safety.

Safeguarding communities bring together adolescent services. The FAST support children and young people where the main area of concern is harm outside of their home, for example exploitation in all forms, peer-on-peer domestic abuse, online harm, radicalisation etc. FAST is co-located with our Youth Justice Service, the police and Barnardo’s.

The Youth Justice Service provides response for children and young people who offend, from a prevention and diversion approach, to children who are subject to statutory orders. Our Youth Work Service has recently moved into Safeguarding Communities strengthening our adolescent offer and offering opportunities to collaborate further.

Dan Atkins

Head of Children’s Social Work Practice (Principal Social Worker)

My role involves ensuring we provide high quality services that have a positive impact on the lives of children and families. My service works with all people in a relational and collaborative way to ensure that we are joined up and innovative in our approach to offer support - with plenty of opportunities for staff to learn, grow and develop.

Rachael Boswell

Head of Homes for Children

Our Children in Care Support Service (CICSS) coordinate and supervise family time sessions for children in care, ensuring these interactions are safe, supportive, and beneficial for all involved. We work closely with social workers, carers, and families to facilitate meaningful connections and support the child's emotional and social development. We deliver this by carefully risk assessing, planning and supervising each session, providing emotional support, and ensuring that the needs and preferences of the children and families are met.

In addition to supporting family time the CICSS team provide valuable therapeutic life story work when the time is right for children in care, working closely with social workers.

Our services are dedicated to ensuring children in care receive high-quality care, love, and support. We will always seek to match children in care with a foster carer before considering other options, however for some children foster care is not the right home for them. Our foster carers receive high-quality training and support through our dedicated fostering teams enabling carers to meet the needs of the children they care for.

For some children in care a residential children's home is the right home for them. Like our foster care homes, our residential children's homes have been developed to meet the diverse needs of Warwickshire's children in care, providing them with a stable home environment where they receive the high quality care and support they need to achieve their best outcomes.

In addition to our foster care and residential services Warwickshire offers young people the opportunity to transition into independence and their own front door via the House Project. The house project helps care experienced young people create their own homes and empowers them to lead connected and fulfilling lives.

Finding the right homes at the right time for our children in care is critical in ensuring they can achieve their best outcomes. The Placement Hub team work closely with our social workers to create strengths-based referrals and share these with our internal services and where internal services are not the right match for children in care the Placement hub team will work with external providers. Alongside our placement hub is a dedicated WRAP team, our WRAP team are primarily available to support children in care when there may be signs of instability.

George Shipman

Head of Sector Led Improvement and Pathfinder Programme

My role as the Head of Families First for Children Pathfinder and Sector Led Improvement is to lead initiatives that enhance the support and services provided to children and families in Warwickshire and other Local Authorities. I am responsible for driving strategic planning, fostering partnerships, and ensuring the implementation of best practices from our learning in Warwickshire. My focus is on continuous improvement, leveraging data and feedback to refine our approaches and achieve better outcomes for children and their families.