Training & events programme

This open course aims to give new and recently appointed fostering and adoption panel members  an opportunity  to  develop  their  role  as  effective panel members and to consider the tasks and responsibilities involved. This will be within the context of the current legislative framework and emerging messages from research.

Fostering and adoption/permanency panel work is challenging to all concerned in the process. This course is intended to share issues, dilemmas and best practice.

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 course is designed to support those who have previously attended “The role of the supervising social worker in supervising and supporting foster carers” and now looking to develop their practice further.
On this course you will explore 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 balancing the potentially conflicting role of the supervising social worker, who needs to balance providing support with the need to sometimes have difficult conversations too.

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 course is an opportunity to consolidate knowledge of kinship assessment practice. It will provide a focus on what constitutes a good assessment, including how to triangulate information, write robust analysis and plan effective support. There will be the opportunity to discuss examples of assessments and support plan alongside case studies. This one day course will reference CoramBAAF’s Kinship Care Assessment (Form K).

The two day course Undertaking a kinship assessment provides more detail for social workers and managers with less experience of kinship assessment. 

Panel advisers have a complex role in managing the relationship between the agency and the panel, quality assuring and feeding back to all involved in panel work. This open course will enable panel advisors to examine this role in detail and build on effective practice as they carry out their role and responsibilities including: quality assurance; inducting new panel members; contributing to the appraisals of panel members; feeding back issues to the agency and working with the agency decision maker. Case scenarios, group work and practice application will provide opportunities for panel advisors to address shared dilemmas and good practice.

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.

This two hour training is aimed at local authority professionals – both social workers and lawyers - who are involved in the placement of children currently living in England to kinship carers overseas on a Special Guardianship Order. It will provide an overview of the legal and practice issues regarding special guardianship for children being placed abroad. There will then be ample time to discuss issues in overseas cases during the case study and group discussion.

Attending court and giving evidence can be a daunting task for many social workers. Increasingly, children’ social workers, adoption social workers and managers are being called to give evidence on staying in touch plans, family-finding and matching when there is a care plan of adoption. This course is an opportunity to learn some key tips, hear advice directly from a legal advisor and practice giving verbal evidence.

The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund has been available to children living with special guardians since 2016, and its name was changed in 2023 with the publication of the National Kinship Care Strategy. Although the number of applications made on behalf of children living with special guardians is slowly increasing, the number of applications is still considerably lower than those made for adopted children.