TWO months after significant changes were brought in for York’s social work services, councillors will hear an early report on how the system is doing.

Local Area Teams (LATs) were introduced in the city in January, in a move which council chiefs said would save £1.4 million over three years and stop people who need help falling through the gaps in provision.

Their introduction has been planned to make it easier for families to get early help, in the hope of preventing the need for expensive interventions when problems get worse later.

The learning and culture policy and scrutiny committee, chaired by Cllr Denise Craghill, will today hear from the council workers involved, and councillors will be told although progress is still at a very early stage, the new teams have had a strong start and initial successes.

A report prepared for the meeting lists several people the local area workers have helped individually, such as a mother who was very isolated and a family with a lot of children where they were worried about a toddler’s speech and language development.

The document goes on to reveal that by next year, York’s children’s centres could face more changes.

Work had already started to look at what should happen to each site and how they could best used to help families. “A site-by-site set of options will be developed and taken forward over the year so that by 31st March 2018 we are able to truly say we are making the best use of these assets,” it adds.