Children and Young People Committee
Inquiry into Arrangements for the Placement of Children into Care
Submission from The Adolescent and Children’s Trust (TACT
The Adolescent and Children’s Trust (TACT) is the UK’s largest charity provider of Fostering and Adoption Services. Our core work involves providing high quality and well supported Fostering or Adoption families for children and young people in the care of the local authorities working from offices across Wales, England and Scotland. We are dedicated to providing creative, effective and outcome-focussed services. We also campaign on behalf of children and young people in care, carers and adoptive families.
Our Vision
Together we are creating a world where every young person is raised by people who care, where communities flourish because we help young people build lives full of opportunity and choice.
Our Mission
We are harnessing the strength of families, carers, communities and organisations to unconditionally support and encourage children and young people to achieve their full potential.
TACT Cymru Fostering
TACT Cymru became registered as a Fostering Agency in 2000.
Our service continues to be registered and regulated by the CSSIW. The service provides long term, short term and emergency foster care for children aged 0-18 years. We work with children from all sectors; these include sibling groups, children with both learning and physical disabilities. We provide child and parent placements.
TACT is also involved in participation work with children and young people, taking forward their views and involving them actively within the organisations. Our work has been recognised as an example of good practice by ‘Research in Practice’ and Charity Matters.
I enclose a statement of purpose for Wales, our 2008-09 Annual Review and our research Project Aspirations.
The inquiry will be attended by Dot Jones, Director of TACT in Wales, and Kevin Williams TACT’s Chief Executive.
This is an essential component towards identifying, planning and matching foster placements. Information needs to include the full assessment (if possible) of the child and his or her background. Information on all the child’s needs is relevant. This include educational, emotional, social, health, leisure and behaviour patterns. Both positive and negative aspects are required. Similarly, information about parents, family members, brothers, sisters and other significant people is also highly relevant.
Also important is information as to whether the child (and his or her family) has been involved about the decision to be ‘looked after’ and what their views are.The above information should be gathered and presented as a referral by the local authority to the fostering agency.
TACT’s experience of this has varied from local authority to local authority. This is usually due to variations in local authority staff skills, knowledge and experience.
We do have examples of excellent practice, allowing a child or young person a planned introduction period to the foster carer. In these cases the child’s social worker has probably known the child for a while. There is also likely to be evidence of good communication and interaction between the local authority social worker and the placement team, with the Fostering Agency involving the proposed foster carers.
In emergency cases, the information is often sparse and incomplete. During these times local authority social workers are primarily concerned with finding a placement rather than acquiring or sharing information. Risk assessments are incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. Moving a child without preparation will often leave a child traumatised, confused and afraid.
Vera Vahlberg in her book ‘Helping Children when they must move’ suggests, ‘that the way the child is moved can profoundly effect the way he or she perceives the move and the effect the move will have on him or her.’
TACT believes that more learning and development is needed between local authority social workers and their placement teams in order to improve practice. There needs to be a greater focus on how children perceive underlying messages at the time of moves and how the trauma of moves can be minimised.
Using that Information
In TACT’s experience the CCSR database does not provide information that meets the needs of a child or young person. Independent Fostering Agencies (IFAs) are not able to access information on the types of placements that are needed by local authorities from the database. This is a wasted resource (in terms of both time and money) for all concerned, particularly the children as ultimately it does not provide choice.
In our experience many local authorities operating tendering services provide a minimum of information. Further information will only be provided if there is an expression of interest and costs provided.
Whilst we understand and acknowledge the financial constraints of local authorities there needs to be an urgent and positive balancing of this with the needs of children in order to help them to achieve positive outcomes. Unless this happens, the initial aims of CCSR (to support the process of finding appropriate care settings for looked after children) will be lost.
We would respectfully suggest that, in order to improve its usefulness, some of the subjects within the format of the CCSR need to be broken down. For example ‘needs of the child being referred’ could be further broken down to: Education, Health, Behaviour, Contact arrangements etc. It would also benefit Independent Fostering Agencies if the system was used by all 22 unitary authorities in Wales. On a more practical note we have experienced some operational difficulties. If you are signed on and do not use the system for a period of time when processing requests, the system will time out and not allow one to log back on for an hour.
It would seem beneficial for further communication and consultation to be held between providers and CCSR in order to improve systems.
As previously stated the more information provided the better, whether written or oral. The better the information, the greater the likelihood of better outcomes for the child or young person.
Sadly, it is common for the foster carer not to receive information at the time of placement. This year TACT has experienced a child being placed by a support worker rather than a social worker. They had no information about the child available to give to the foster carer.
We have found that some social workers will provide all Looked After Children (LAC) information such as care plans and other essential information. However, from auditing files I have also found repeated requests by TACT Supervising Social Workers for written documentation which should have been available at time of placement or soon afterwards.
In several cases children and young people have had a variety of social workers, or gaps with no visits. The only way that a child or young person will build up trust, understand why he or she is in their situation, and be clear about what is going to happen to them is if they see their social worker on a regular basis.
Our experience is that the commissioning system inhibits the provision of information and is not conducive to effective interaction. The main focus of the system appears to be cost.
Whilst practice is variable, there is a clear framework and guidance for planning reviews of children’s cases.
In some cases there is a ‘drift’ and short term placements can become long term placements without specific planning. This can cause confusion for the child, foster family and birth family. However this is not necessarily the fault of the social worker but can be consequential to delays in the Court systems.
The introduction of the Public Law outline does not seem to have expedited case handling through the courts as was originally anticipated.
This will depend on the information given to the carer. For example we are aware of cases when:
A child was placed but no information was provided about the child having sexually abused a member of his family. The information provided for the risk assessment did not make any reference to this.
A 10 year old who was known to light fires but this information was not passed on until the boy had been in placement for a few days.
At TACT, in order to help prepare foster carers for the unknown, they have to attend training around safe care. Safe care plans are provided for their family and the child to be placed with them, which are then presented with the Form F Assessment at the Fostering Panel. This plan is reviewed for each new placement at an annual review.
It is important that any identified risks need to be shared verbally and in writing. Issues should be discussed and ways of minimising risks identified. It is necessary to include all members of the household including the foster carers birth children.
As with earlier answers this can be variable. If possible, children and young people must be involved in what will be an extremely important, and probably traumatic, time of their lives. It is crucial that they know their social worker, are listened to and feel that they are heard. The attached ‘Aspirations on the views of Fostered Children and their Carers’ is a summary research report of the views of TACT children and foster carers carried out by Professor Bob Broad of London South Bank University. It shows that between 46% and 65% of children, when asked about involvement in decisions about review meeting, said they had a ‘lot of say’ about decisions in their review meeting.
This is an area best described as ambiguous. There is a need for greater clarity over roles and responsibilities. Examples where grey areas exist include overnight stays for a child in placement with a school friend, leisure trips and school trips. These can all raise many issues and frustrations for the child in placement particularly as the ‘Aspirations’ research, referred to above, indicated that young people in care want to be treated as normally as possible.
We find that foster carers are usually the main contact with schools, doctors, and so on. Generally they act as excellent advocates for the children placed with them.
Due to the geography of Wales, we feel that if a child is placed out of county (i.e. more than 2 hours away from placing authority) visits are unlikely to be regular. This can heighten frustration and concerns experienced by the young person.
We have also noticed that some authorities experience a high turn over of staff and high numbers of agency workers. This can result in inconsistency and disruption as varying opinions, observations, planning and input from different sources can adversely affect the placement.
This is undertaken in two ways. Children have LAC reviews which focus on their care plans. All TACT foster carers have annual reviews which look at the placement; their needs; training; growth and understanding; how they meet the child’s needs; the affect on their family and so on. The birth children will also have an opportunity to comment. The local authority social worker will also have an opportunity to give their views on how they feel the foster carers are meeting the child’s needs, and make other comments they feel appropriate. The review will then confirm- or not- the registration and criteria of the foster carers.
TACT also undertakes a review of the outcomes for each child in placement to ensure that the child’s health, education, social and emotional needs are being met to help them reach their full potential.
TACT’s Managers, Social Workers and Foster Carers receive regular supervision to support their various roles and assist in the collection of qualitative information. Similarly, the local authority social worker should also be receiving supervision.
TACT believes that there is a plan to introduce the qualitative approach in the near future within the SEWIC Authorities. Currently, the measuring of outcomes is relatively unstructured. For example, simply asking if the child is happy in placement!
TACT would make several comments:
Communication – we understand the need for systems to refer placements. However, also of fundamental importance is the need for dialogue between the local authority, the IFA, the foster carer, the child or young person and the birth family in preparation for a placement and thereafter.
Similarly, Local Authorities and the IFA should communicate effectively on a regular (six monthly) basis sharing both positive information, updates on service provision, addressing any shortfalls or concerns and other relevant material.
Role of Foster Carers - Foster Carers should be seen as professionals. They should be central to meetings and reviews. They hold a vital role and are trusted with the welfare of often vulnerable young people. As such, they are a vital part of the decision making process.
CCSR Database – TACT suggests a review systems, in order to ensure that information is available and transparent (when appropriate) to all.
TACT requests that Voluntary Agencies (Charitable) are not discriminated against regarding choice because they are classed as a Voluntary Agency – if this is happening there is less choice and availability for children and young people. Our experience (and that of other Voluntary Agencies) is that private agencies are contacted before the voluntary sector.
Also there is a need for more effective integration of systems such as the All Wales Contract, SEWIC Systems and CCSR. Unfortunately, there is a lot of repetitive information duplicated within the systems.
Dot Jones
Director of Children’s Services
TACT Cymru
d.jones@tactcare.org.uk
