Our Practice Framework: Together with Children and Families

Together with Children and Families (Together) is our relationship-based practice framework. 

Together represents a way of working with children and their families that is based on developing trusting relationships that prioritise listening, understanding, clear reasoning, respect and integrity. 
The Together practice framework sets out our values, how these values work in practice, the difference this makes, and the materials we use to sustain and improve the effectiveness of our work with children and families. 

Our ambition is to offer every child who needs our help in proceedings, an exceptional experience, wherever they live in the country and every time we are with them or thinking about them. Every child deserves this, and it is our responsibility to make sure it happens. 

Using our Together practice framework, we make an assessment about what is going well for children in their families as well as an understanding of the harm they have experienced, whether we think there are risks of future harm for them, what and why we think needs to be recommended that is in their current and future best interests. We want children, their families and carers to understand why we are making the recommendations that we are to the family court and to have had a chance to tell us what they think about them – we want to use children’s words about our recommendations in reports to the family court.

We hope our partners, families and children all feel the impact of our Together practice framework and notice the importance we are affording to relationships, to feedback and to improvement and learning. 

Learn more about our Together Practice Framework and how it helps us in our work with children and families in public and private law proceedings.