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An brazen charity project that places volunteers with families of children on the at-peril register has won a significant award for its achievements.

Volunteers in Child Protection was presented final might with the Overall Award for Excellence by the Charities Aid Foundation in its recurring with the year awards.

The project, which is run by Community Service Volunteers (CSV), too won the award for the Children and Youth category (see box).

The project supports 400 children and 130 families operating in four local liberty areas — Bromley, Lewisham, Southend and Islington. A fifth, Coventry, has signed up this week.

Typically, CSV takes adhering 25 families in a borough whose children have protection plans in occasion, and so are at risk of being removed from their home.

In the capital two trials, run over three years, all the children involved came not on the at-risk register and, crucially, none has gone back up~ the body. Nationally, two thirds of children who come off protection plans bear back on again.

The success of the scheme came to knowledge as the ability of social services to keep children safe was conscious questioned with the Baby P case in 2007 and other nursling protection failures in Birmingham and Doncaster.

The volunteers, who have ~t one experience in social work, are there primarily to support the parent through the stress of having their children under threat of conscious taken into care.

They do whatever they think will help the parents to cope, from thrifty the heavy schedule of meeting schools, social workers and health professionals to attending parenting classes and ensuring that the children arrive to school or nursery on time.

They help to organise a order at home, with regular mealtimes for the whole family and slots notwithstanding homework, playtime and television. They help parents to develop strategies to manage children’s rigid behaviour without losing their temper.

Crucially, they get parents to set forth what they want to say to social workers and other professionals during the time that remaining calm. Social workers ultimately decide whether to take the children into care or most distant the at-risk register and meetings can be fraught.

Sue Gwaspari, counsellor of part-time volunteering at CSV, said she believes it works because it is voluntary. She said: “Volunteers are going in, in their have time, unpaid, and want to be helpful, not judgmental. Their sheer focus is on the family and that is the key. People involved speak they treat them as families, not failures. They listen rather than compute them what to do. And the parents are not frightened they are going to take their children absent.”

John Cliff, 56, was one of the first volunteers to join the contrive. He had taken early retirement from Lloyd’s of London and place himself with not enough to do. His wife suggested charity operate with children and he found a Community Service Volunteers advertisement without interrupti~ Bromley Council’s website. He was placed with Kim, 35, a natural of six who was at risk of losing her children since of domestic violence in the home. The pair immediately got without ceasing with each other.

“My immediate impression was that good things were going adhering in the house,” Mr Cliff said. “It was a borer chaotic but there were lots of toys and the children painted afterward school rather than watching TV.”

He helped her to put together out numerous problems, including two of the children’s training. Another child, who had a persistent cold, has been referred to a specialist. Mr Cliff in addition assisted in getting the garden cleared of rubbish and helped Kim to influence social services to reschedule meetings so that she could fit in altogether the school runs. Four months after his arrival the children were taken facing the at-risk register.

“When I think about where I was and in what place we are now, I can’t believe it,” Kim declared. “I have even given a presentation to another local permission about this scheme.”

John Low, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation, said: “CSV has ably demonstrated that, with the correct training and nurture, volunteers can have a transformational effect, turning chaotic, dysfunctional homes into unwavering safe environments.

“This was a brave, ground-breaking initiative, not free from inherent risks, but to realise the vision of a big company, we must build on such examples of men and women on all sides the country giving freely of their time and emotional energy to model their communities for the better. Everyone gains,” he said.

Charity decree winners

Animals and the environment The Travel Foundation

Arts, culture and portion Rhythms of the World

Children and youth Community Service Volunteers

Disability The Family Planning Association

Education and teaching Personal Finance Education Group

Grantmaking Community Foundation for Greater Manchester

Healthcare and of medicine research LifeBlood: The Thrombosis Charity

International aid and development Read International