Keyworking Service

Keyworking service for children and young people with autism and/or learning disability

Who do we support?

The North East London Keyworking service works with children and young people with learning disabilities and/or Autism, aged 0-25 years old who have complex needs.

The service is available across:

• Barking & Dagenham
• Havering
• Waltham Forest
• Redbridge
• City & Hackney
• Newham
• Tower Hamlets

What do we do?

The aim of the Keyworking service is to ensure children, young people and their families’ voices are heard and represented and they have the right support from services at the right time, to improve their experiences and outcomes, reduce the length of stay in specialist hospitals or avoid admission. 

How will we provide support?

The Keyworking service will tailor the support provided based on each child, young person and family.

They will work with the services already involved in care and treatment to identify where additional support is most needed to make sure that their involvement is adding value and not duplicating or disrupting existing support.

We will not replace any currently supporting health and social care workers.

Sometimes, the Keyworking case managers may work directly with the child, young person and family, or they may work with services (social care, education, health etc) to join up care and treatment and to ensure there are no gaps.

Examples of what they may do to help avoid admission or support an earlier discharge include:

• Advocate for children, young people and families to ensure their voices are heard, understood and respected
• Ensure the right support from services within a timely manner at the right time
• Support services to work in a joined-up way
• Represent children, young people and families when they may not feel confident or able to speak up themselves
• Give you information and guidance in a way that will help improve quality of life
• Help children, young people and families to work with and have access to health, care, education and voluntary organisations
• Build trust as someone that will be a consistent presence for the child, young person and family during any transition, for example, helping with the transition into adulthood and adult services or between phases of education

How to access the keyworking service: 

To access keyworking support, children and young people must be on their local dynamic support register. They can ask a professional working with them to refer, or they can make a self-referral by contacting the dynamic support register holders.

What is a dynamic support register?

A dynamic support register is a list of people with learning disabilities and autism who need support because they at risk of going into hospital if they do not get the right care and treatment in the community. No one is added to the register without their consent.