Search results

Foster carers are susceptible to allegations and/or complaints which will impact on the whole fostering household and their future as care givers. How should we as a profession respond to these situations in a sensitive, timely manner, whilst giving due regard to the safeguarding of children as well as the needs of carers and their household?

This open course will address the process for distinguishing standards of care concerns from allegations or complaints, with opportunities to share good practice in recruiting, reviewing and supporting foster carers.

The PACE parenting approach was developed by Dr Dan Hughes for parents and carers of children who are adopted or live in foster or kinship care families. PACE stands for Playfullness, Acceptance. Curiosity, and Empathy and is an attitude has proved to be helpful for many professionals working in adoption, fostering or kinship care services.

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.

This open course will be an opportunity to explore personal and professional values and thresholds in respect of assessing connected persons, including tools to assist in assessing the child’s and the connected persons’ continued relationship with the birth parents and any possible risks posed to the child and carer and how these can be managed.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
This session aims to provide adoption services and practitioners an overview of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). It aims to help fostering and adoption services by providing strategies and resources to assist adoption agencies who are working with children or young people with a FASD diagnosis. Our presenters are Sandy and Martin Butcher, co-founders and co-chairs of the Hertfordshire FASD Support Network. Our Chair is Alice Sewell a trainer at NationalFASD.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
Special guardians are usually family members or family friends who look after a child when the birth parent is deemed not able to, often due to the child being at risk of abuse or neglect despite interventions and support from social services. Michelle Hall's PhD explores the experience of contact from both the perspective of the special guardian and the birth parent. The study explores special guardians' experience and identifies three core areas of importance when managing contact with birth parents. This session will discuss each of those areas in depth, including how the findings may impact practice and the way we support special guardians with contact.

The Secure Base Model devised by Gillian Schofield and Mary Beek (UEA) focuses on the interactions that occur between caregivers and children, through the provision of a positive framework for therapeutic caregiving, which helps infants, children and young people to move towards greater security and builds resilience.

This open course will offer a comprehensive approach to undertaking sibling assessments. It will explore who the key contributors to sibling assessments are and how assessors can plan assessments and engage these contributors in the process. Most importantly it will explore how to gain the views of the children, observe sibling interactions and draw conclusions on the quality of sibling relationships as well as focusing on the individual needs of each child and of the sibling group.

The open course will help to increase the understanding of the supervisory requirements of supervising social workers, in line with fostering legislation. It will look at roles and responsibilities in relation to safeguarding children and young people and how foster carers can be supported and developed in their role.