This toolkit has been developed as part of the Risk Outside The Home (ROTH) national support programme. It is dedicated to thinking about chairing arrangements in ROTH pathways.
At the bottom of this page are links to GCCS resources for you to read, download and use. These resources will help you think about what it means to chair these types of conferences and manage pathways focused on extra-familial harms, how this differs from a traditional child protection pathway, and how to ensure chairing remains ethical, impactful and underpinned by an ethic of care.
This toolkit features new resources developed as part of our ongoing research into the development and scaling of ROTH pathways, developed by members of the GCCS who, since 2019, have completed various projects to document Contextual Safeguarding implementation. This includes learning from a range of partners such as children’s social care, the police, schools, voluntary and community organisations, young people, their parents, families and communities.
These resources will support social care professionals leading and chairing ROTH pathways and professional partners who are invited to participate in a ROTH pathway to:
- Understand how to develop and lead pathways informed by care
- Explore how to set the culture and tone of the pathway
- Think about how they plan around conferences and what is needed for chairs before they begin
- Ask reflective questions about how to conduct and manage the chairing process
- Learn from real-life scenarios developed from our research
In our research, we have found that strong chairing of ROTH conferences is integral to ensuring ROTH pathways are ethical, effective and grounded in a welfare-based approach. This video highlights five key ways in which chairs can set a caring tone when leading ROTH pathways.
