Long term, our vision is to support the Children’s Services sector in Wales and England to deliver sustainable change and safe care for children, young people and their families.
Cheka Safeguarding History: Where We Started
Cheka Safeguarding Services is a Limited Company with two Directors Emma Griffiths and Zaineb Alkhafaji-Williams and was established in November 2013
From our modest beginnings we have gone on to build a strong reputation for offering high quality work, a reliable workforce and flexible working arrangements to a wide range of clients across Wales.
Directors Emma Griffiths and Zaineb Alkhafaji-Williams have considerable operational and strategic experience in Children’s Services between them having occupied the roles of Social Worker, Senior Practitioner, Team Manager, Independent Reviewing Officer, and Conference Chairperson. In addition both have managed a Child Protection and Quality Assurance Service within Local Authorities.
Each agency that commissions our services will be provided with the name of an individual Director, who will act as the lead officer for that contract.
Cheka Safeguarding Today
Over its first three years Cheka Safeguarding has expanded its services, team and workload. Our initial three year contract with one Local Authority has expanded to managing several clients and contracts, with that initial contract potentially being extended to five years. Our list of services is captured under “Core Services” but we now receive commissions for work from many of the South Wales Local Authorities, third sector organisations and private solicitors seeking assessments of parents in care proceedings amongst other items.
The Rainbow
“Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud” Maya Angelou
Children are special, a gift, precious and deserve to be nurtured, loved, kept safe and grow up in a home that values and promotes this. Empowering them to live safe lives is essential for their future and so it was vital their images were captured in our logo. The Rainbow in our company logo reflects our belief that children, young people and their families come in a spectrum of shapes and sizes. Sometimes there are differences in arrangements meaning that children are cared for by alternative family members or in alternative permanent arrangements – we understand and appreciate this variety and respond flexibly to whatever circumstances we are required to deal with.
Quality
Cheka Safeguarding Services puts quality and performance at its core and will be monitored and evaluated by:-
- Ensuring all contracts include details of the outcomes that agencies who commission our services wish to achieve, and the performance measures to be used to evaluate compliance.
- Holding regular Contract Review Meetings with the commissioning lead officer for agencies who contract our services
- Compiling information regarding Cheka’s ability to meet the requests of agencies who request our services.
- Monitoring and evaluating the quality of the independent practitioners we commission through:
- Cheka’s Supervision and Appraisal Policy
- Evaluation of Service Provision Forms
- Monitoring of Cheka’s Safeguarding Policy
- Regular audit of complaints and representation
- Regular audit of professional checks, such as DBS
- Conducting observations of the Independent Social Work Practitioners we commission
- Conducting routine sampling of written work undertaken by the Independent Practitioners we commission
- Holding Team Meetings with the independent Social Work practitioners we commission.
- Completing an annual Training Needs Analysis to identify learning needs for the forthcoming year.
- Conducting an annual review of our services, to inform the Business Plan for the forthcoming year.
