North Edinburgh Working Together (NEWT)

“NEWT gives you the opportunity to work with the broadest spectrum of children and families service users. Whether you're working one-to-one with a child or liaising with other professionals NEWT has everything a student requires to meet their learning goals” - Social Work Student

MCFB currently works in partnership with NEWT. The project began in October 2004, as an initiative to consolidate working relationships between the agencies and to create new learning opportunities for social work students. NEWT is a multi-disciplinary agency providing support to children and families in the north of Edinburgh. It is part of the wider local authority ‘Working Together’ service that operates throughout Edinburgh, focusing especially on working in close partnership with the local schools to support vulnerable children and their families. The NEWT service is delivered through a school cluster system, and part of the remit is to provide the service to the schools within the Drummond Community High School cluster, in partnership with our colleagues from NEWT. Alongside Drummond Community High School this includes: Broughton Primary, Abbeyhill Primary, Leith Walk Primary and St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary at London Street.

The aim of ‘Working Together’ is to keep children and young people with their families, in their local school and in their local community. To achieve this goal NEWT works to reduce the number of children:

  • being looked after by the council
  • being excluded from school
  • truanting from school
  • attending residential schools or non-residential special schools

As part of the project we provide direct one-to-one support to children, family work, and group work with children referred for ‘Working Together’ Services. This often involves undertaking tasks on behalf of the local authority, such as providing assessments to the children's hearing system, and working in partnership with the local children and families' teams. Social work students placed at NEWT have the opportunity to carry out these tasks and to engage in direct work with children and young people both within the community and within a school setting. The project was a finalist in the Care Accolades 2006 in the category: “Best Example of Increasing Diversity of Practice Learning Opportunities”.

Young Person

“It helps with everything you need support with”


Guidance Teacher

“It was a pleasure to work with [the social work student], a positive experience for the school and the family involved”