Training & events programme

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 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.

This course provides supervising social workers the opportunity to develop their practice and confidence in these areas. It will include a review their role and responsibilities in relation to foster carers and promote the development of best practice.

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.

Annual Reviews are an essential part of our statutory support and supervision of foster carers. In this open course, we explore how to complete an annual review well. We explore how to ensure the review meets the needs of the Fostering Service to be legally compliant, but also of carers to feel valued and supported, whilst keeping children at the centre of the process.

This open course course will enable participants to increase their understanding of the role of permanence in children's lives. By reflecting on best practice, it will help those attending to form permanence plans that are geared to improving the outcomes for children and young people, including their emotional, cognitive and physical development.

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 safety of children in care is paramount. Therefore it is essential we investigate and respond to allegations, complaints and concerns about foster carers in a timely way and ensure children’s voices are heard and their needs met. This course will provide an opportunity to consider how we can manage allegations and concerns, with the rigour and challenge needed, whilst also considering the need for foster carers to receive sensitive support, that enables them to manage risks and keep everyone in the fostering household safe.

This open course aims to challenge your understanding of the meaning of diversity and intersectionality. This training will be a highly interactive exploration of equality, diversity and inclusion.

The Secure Base Model is a strengths-based framework for therapeutic caregiving informed by developments and research into attachment theory and child placement. It focuses on the interactions between a child and their caregiver that can support a child to experience greater security and build resilience.