Frequently Asked Questions – Independent Social Work
Where are you based?
We are based in Suffolk but able to offer services nationally if required. Appleby Social Work predominantly operates in East Anglia (Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Bedfordshire and Cambridge), London, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Berkshire & Buckinghamshire.
We can offer face to face or virtual appointments or a mix of both.
Why should I use an ISW?
There are many reasons to instruct ISW’s. Usually people choose to instruct ISW’s to obtain specialist assessments, or reduce waiting times, especially in protracted or difficult proceedings.
Appleby Social Work have a wide variety of specialist skills to help support the Court in their decision making and ensure that decisions are child focussed.
Use the ISW Referral form to contact us to discuss your individual assessment needs, including cost and timescales.
What are your fees?
For ISW work, we offer fixed fee assessments (public and private law) as well as hourly/ day rates for other pieces of work including attending meetings and being present in Court.
These are discussed at the time of referral and throughout ongoing work, and always agreed prior to undertaking.
How long does an ISW assessment take?
Timescales for assessments can vary dramatically depending on circumstance. However, for a ‘standard assessment’ we would usually allocate 30 professional hours for S.7 reports or a single person parenting capacity assessments, and 50 hours for single person ParentAssess parenting capacity assessment.
Assessments involving more than one person will have an additional 5-10 hours added on as needed.
If, on review it appears that additional time will be needed due to new information, large bundles or other factors this will be discussed with the lead party and agreed prior to work being undertaken.
Contact us using the ISW Referral Form to discuss your timescale requirements.
Frequently Asked Questions – Practice Development and Consultation
Where are you based?
We are based in Suffolk but able to offer services nationally. We use MS Teams where appropriate to offer virtual services to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce cost.
Why does Appleby Social Work offer social work services and practice development?
Appleby Social Work was founded by an experienced Social Worker who recognised that strong outcomes for children and families depend on the quality of day-to-day practice.
Extensive career experience in both operational and strategic posts resulted in the combination of passionate, trauma informed and restorative social work, and a head for QA, Ofsted readiness and service transformation. Combine this with an emphasis on reflection and the promotion of learning cultures, and we get much closer to the goal of improving outcomes for children, young people and their families.
That’s why we do both.
What are your fees?
Fees are often based on an hourly or day rate as appropriate for things like training, quality assurance and Audit.
Fixed fees can be agreed for set pieces of work for example; a programmes of staff supervision, policy writing or Reg 44 visits etc.
I don’t need a whole package, can you offer one off pieces of work?
Absolutely – We can offer large bespoke packages of QA, training and workforce development, one-off sessions of 1:1 or peer supervision and everything in between.
Click ‘Contact Us’ to see what Appleby Social Work may be able to offer.