Training & events programme

We are delighted to announce a date for our Adoption Conference. This conference is set to become a key event in the calendar of social work practitioners working with adoption families. It is a conference that brings together practice and ideas that are current, relevant to you, and which matter.

This two-day open course will provide practitioners and particularly those who may be new to undertaking, quality assuring or considering fostering assessments with an opportunity to develop knowledge, skills and practice in completing fostering assessments. This workshop may also provide a refresher for those wanting to reflect and build on knowledge skills and best practice in the completion of fostering assessments.

FREE FOR MEMBERS

This Exploring Expertise webinar will introduce practitioners to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) Better Records Together campaign and its implications for children’s social care practice. Drawing on the ICO’s new care records standards and research with care-experienced people, the session will explore how organisations can improve the way records are created, managed and shared.

FREE FOR MEMBERS

This session will explore how AI can support social work practice without weakening professional judgement, and the support, guidance and training required to accompany the use of these tools. The tools were developed with a simple initial aim: to reduce the time social workers spend writing Form F assessments, while improving clarity, consistency and reflective depth.

Foster carers are increasingly being asked to care for a parent and their child during care proceedings, and to contribute towards the assessment of parenting capacity. This type of arrangement is complex, involving different tasks and responsibilities.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
The Reflective Fostering Programme is a group intervention for carers looking after children aged between 4 and 12 years. It increases carers’ ability to mentalise about the feelings and thoughts of themselves and the child leading to lower levels of stress and burnout and a better relationship with the child. In this session, we unpack the latest research studies on the effectiveness of the reflective fostering programme in supporting foster carers.

This course is an opportunity to consider what we know about staying in touch from research, including what works well, the voices of those with lived experience, and aspects that may present challenges or need more support.

This course is an opportunity to explore the unique context of kinship care and assessment of prospective kinship carers. Participants will explore professional and personal values and gain knowledge of what constitutes a robust kinship assessment within the legal and regulatory framework. The course will consider different assessment tools that can be used in kinship assessment practice, triangulation of information and effective support planning.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
Our social work practice must be guided by the values and principles of anti-racist practice and cultural humility. This means embedding them into all aspects of our work with families, bringing self-awareness of our own biases, assumptions and privileges, and centering families’ lived experience. 

This course is an opportunity to understand key concepts and consider why anti-racist practice and cultural humility matter. You will be supported to explore how you can build relationships with families that honour diverse perspectives and recognise unique needs, and explore tools to enable you to better understand the identities of children and their families. You will then consider how this understanding can be applied to your practice to develop culturally appropriate assessments and interventions that reflect the lived realities of children and families and take account of their intersecting identities.

Accurate and succinct minutes are an essential part of many meeting processes. They provide a formal record of the discussions and recommendations, and are used for a variety of purposes following the meeting including to inform decision-making, to contribute to child and carer files, and to provide an account of decision-made when children or adults access their files in the future. This course will help you learn the statutory and good practice requirements around minute-taking across various meeting contexts, including fostering and adoption panels, disruption meetings, carer reviews and professionals meetings. You will have the opportunity to practice skills to ensure your minutes are accurate, informative and of high quality.