ABOUT JAMMA UMOJA
Established in 1996, Jamma Umoja was founded by Ron Crosbie and Fran Bulsara, who both wanted to provide families with the opportunity to learn and grow and address concerns in the hope that children would remain in their care and with their family. Both Ron and Fran had worked for many years previously as community workers and social workers in children's services. Ron pioneered residential family assessments and was the very first to pioneer viability assessments, now used UK-wide as a preliminary assessment tool.
Jamma Umoja has grown in size and experience over the 26 years of working in the social care industry. With a multi-discipliniary team extending to senior social workers, phycologists and support workers, Jamma has an extensive range of experience and skillsets beneficial to our service users.
As a court-recognised organisation, we pride ourselves on the quality of our final reports and recommendations for children and families.
Jamma Umoja are a diverse and inclusive staff team equipped to work with service users of any cultural background, our services also cater for non-english speaking families.
Jamma Umoja is a registered resource in line with the requirements of Care Standards Act 2000 [CSA 2000] and was registered by CSCI in 2004. Jamma is required to meet the National Minimum Care standards for Family Centres (March 2015) as cited in the Regulations for Family Centres 2002. Jamma is inspected by Ofstead (registration SC052588).
OUR ETHOS
Jamma's key underlying principle which informs all the work we provide is that children come first and their needs are paramount. Not only is this a legislative requirement but it is also our experience that by offering families the best opportunity to be assessed with their children we can be sure to achieve the best outcomes.
Best outcomes and success are not necessarily synonymous with children remaining with their families, although that is clearly a desired outcome. Best outcomes are in our view about taking a pro-active approach to assessment and treatment so that we are working alongside parents/carers and their children to understand what has led to this state of affairs and to support individuals to maximise their potential.
Jamma understands that each family has its own set of needs and we aim to identify each family's need and provide a service which offers targeted intervention, focused on engagement and building trust, to work openly and transparently with families and to confront difficult areas with sensitivity, ensuring residents are treated with dignity and respect.
We have a firm belief in the multi-disciplinary approach providing a holistic basis for evaluating and making recommendations. By bringing different skills and approaches we are able to examine all areas of parenting to offer a thorough and rounded assessment of risk at all levels.
Jamma Umoja promotes diversity and anti-oppressive practice, working alongside parents, offering guidance and modelling behaviour. We support the parent to explore their background history of experience of being parented to identify and understand patterns within their own childhood which have or could potentially replay in their current behaviour as a parent.