CoramBAAF teams up with Fostering Network to hold engagement event on the Independent Care Review
CoramBAAF and the Fostering Network are working to make sure the fostering sector is represented and the complexity of the fostering role in supporting children and their families is fully understood. We are working together and independently through our forums and networks to inform thinking and to ensure recommendations will have a meaningful and positive impact.
The Case for Change sets out what the Review team think are the key issues in children’s social care. We are pleased that there is a focus on relationships. Relationships are at the heart of family life and the building of warm and positive relationships is at the heart of good fostering and good social work practice. The challenge for all of us is how to create the conditions that allow sensitive and responsive relationships to flourish, within and between agencies, within families, and between families and practitioners. The relational world of service provision cannot be under-estimated in enabling the best of what is needed in families and for children.
CoramBAAF and the Fostering Network are committed to ensuring that the fundamentals of relationships drive the foster care system. Foster care is complex and multifaceted. Foster carers can support children to sustain and enhance relationships with their birth families and often step in at times of crisis. Foster carers can be kinship carers and many go on to have special guardianship or/and adoption orders for the children in their care.
We are pleased the Review team are seeking feedback and we urge the team to engage with the Education Select Committee Report which was warmly received and evidence-based.
We are inviting fostering services to discuss their views about the current issues in fostering and what can be done to address these. The opportunity to do this (in relation to the Case for Change) is limited due to the timeframe set by the Review team.
Our event will take place online on Wednesday 4 August, 10:00-11:15am. Please register by 1 August.
Attending this engagement event is your opportunity to tell the Review what needs to happen to make meaningful improvements in fostering. If you cannot attend the event but would still like to submit your views you can do so by emailing policy@fostering.net.