Events archive

This course explores how good quality, challenging supervision can contribute to a high quality of care provided by foster and kinship carers and to establishing and maintaining effective working relationships. We will explore the at times conflicting role of the supervising social worker, who needs to balance providing support with the need to at times have difficult conversations too. Further areas explored include foster care reviews and managing allegations. This training will combine theory, practical exercises and opportunities to reflect, to meet the learning needs of both social workers new to the role and those who are more experienced.

Exposure to domestic abuse can have long-term consequences for children’s health and development. These may not be immediately apparent once children have been removed from an abusive home and are living with alternative carers. The impact of domestic abuse can be missed in assessment and planning, resulting in children not receiving the level of care and support they need.

This Good Practice Guide is the first to focus primarily on supporting children who have witnessed or experienced domestic abuse prior to coming into care. It offers information on how domestic abuse affects children at different ages and stages in their development, the care these children need, and how best to assess, prepare and support them and the families caring for them.

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.

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
In this session Paul Shuttleworth will be discussing why children's views are worthy of inclusion in research and shaping policy and practice in kinship care. Paul will discuss his research, the first that solely listens to children's insights about emotional permanence. The research also champions a new ‘what matters’ approach. This can be used in further research as well as in practice and everyday family life.

The responsibilities of a Chair can be considerable. Whereas some duties may be clearly outlined in related practice guidance along with the qualities that ensure effective chairing, not all Chair responsibilities are so helpfully detailed or provided. This workshop will explore general planning for and facilitation of panels and complex meetings in the children’s sector. It will explore time management and group facilitation whilst holding the child at the centre of thinking, recommendations and decision making. It will enable Chairs of meetings to consider good practice and approaches to effectively managing the flow of information, summarising and the formation of key action plans.

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.

This half day course is aimed at professionals who work with children and families who may benefit from a therapeutic intervention and would like to increase their understanding of different therapeutic approaches. Foster carers, kinship carers and adoptive parents who are considering different options for therapeutic support may also benefit from this training.

Decision makers in fostering and adoption agencies have a vital but often under-explored role. Many decision makers describe finding themselves in the role with little or no preparation, and with few arenas locally to share dilemmas or discuss best practice. What is the best process for reaching a sound decision? How can you avoid it simply becoming a ‘rubber-stamping’ exercise? What is your role in relation to the quality assurance of the panel’s activities? How should a decision maker appraise a panel chair? What does a reasonable decision look like? How should it be conveyed?

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.