AWE (05)
Children and Young PeopleCommittee
Inquiry into arrangements for the placement of Children into care.
Response from The Fostering Network Wales
In your experience, to what extent are the problems of social work practice a reflection of recruitment, retention and training issues in social work departments?
There are two social worker roles that are critical for fostering families and looked after children:
Child care social worker,
Supervising social worker
The main problems in social work practice relating to fostering seem to be:
Full information not being made available to foster carers
Lack of understanding of the role of foster carers and therefore the support given to foster carers and the recognition of them as part of the team.
Information sharing
As stated in our evidence submitted to the committee previously there are problems about information sharing by social workers to foster carers.
In a recent survey undertaken by The Fostering Network Getting the support they need The Fostering Network Oct 2009 about support that foster carers receive, 53% of the respondents in Wales said that in the past 3 years they had a child placed with them for whom they were not given all the information needed to care for them safely. 81% had not been given information about the child’s general behavior, nearly 70% had not been told about the history of abuse suffered by the child, and just over 30% had not been told the child’s medical requirements.
All approved foster carers should be linked with a qualified social worker who provides supervision and support to them and other members of the family. This person should be in regular contact with the foster family to monitor how things are going, discuss development opportunities and offer support and guidance all year round. It is beneficial to a positive working relationship if the same supervising social worker is involved for a period of time to provide continuity and contribute to effective professional relationships.
The service and therefore the support that foster carers and the looked after child receive depends on the maturity, skills, knowledge and experience of these key people which will have a positive impact on their working relationship. It is essential that the child care social worker and supervising social worker see themselves along with the foster carer as part of the team working towards achieving the best possible outcome for the looked after child.
In a recent survey undertaken by the Fostering Network Wales Pep survey the Fostering Network publication due winter 2009 66% of the 504 foster carer respondents received information about Personal Educational Plans but 20% were never included in discussions about the PEP of the child they were caring for. Foster carers today are child care experts working alongside a team of other professionals to meet the needs of our most vulnerable children. However, the foster carer’s expertise is not always recognised and their views and opinions are not always taken into account.
Support
A recent review of research on foster care in the UK found that ‘carers want respect; efficiency; reliable; warm support from social workers; good information on foster children; responsive out-of-hours services; relief breaks when they need them; information on entitlements; fair remuneration; appropriate training and an absence of avoidable hassles (e.g. quarrels over insurance).’ Sinclair, I Fostering Now. Messages from research (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London, 2005) p. 107
The Fostering Network undertook a survey in 2009 Getting the support they need The Fostering Network 2009 of its members across the UK to find out whether the level and quality of support they were offered was meeting their needs. It also asked if they had looked after children outside of their approval range in the last three years. If so, did they have the skills and experience needed to look after them, or were they able to access additional support to help them if required.
There were some very encouraging results. Foster carers reported that their supervising social workers were supportive.
Ninety five percent of foster carers had a named supervising social worker
Keeping the same supervising social worker was one of the most important types of support for 50 per cent of foster carers.
Nearly half of foster carers had had the same supervising social worker for more than two years.
The regularity of contact between foster families and their supervising social workers can vary. Many fostering services offer planned contact but access between supervision varies between fostering services.
Just over 70 per cent of foster carers met with their supervising social worker either monthly or every six weeks.
Over 90 per cent of foster carers were able to contact their supervising social worker either directly on their office or mobile phone.
If foster carers are contacting their supervising social worker in an emergency it is vital that their call is returned promptly or alternative support is available to the foster carer.
Over 60 per cent of foster carers had experienced their call being returned on the same day if the supervising social worker was not available.
Receiving good quality and timely support from a qualified and experienced supervising social worker is very important.
96 per cent of foster carers rated the availability of their supervising social worker as being important to them.
75 per cent of foster carers rated their current supervising social worker as either excellent or good. Nine per cent rated them as poor.
It is clear that foster carers welcome and value regular, supportive contact from their supervising social worker. Calls to Fosterline Wales, the advice and information line funded by WAG and run by Fostering Network Wales reflect a similar picture.
Children's social workers have a legal duty to ensure that the children they are responsible for are being properly cared for emotionally and physically. In order to carry out their responsibilities, the child's social worker should visit foster homes regularly to observe the child or young person and talk through with the foster carers and the child/young person how the placement is going.
As foster carers look after a child on a day-to-day basis they will have a lot of useful information for the child’s social worker. Foster carers are expected to keep records on a range of things such as the child’s reaction to contact with parents, their progress at school and their relationships with the foster family and other children.
In our survey:
96 per cent of foster carers rated the provision of support from the child’s social worker as important to them.
Over 40 per cent of foster carers rated the actual support received from the child’s social worker as excellent or good.
But a quarter of foster carers rated the support they received as poor.
This is very concerning.
As foster carers have day to day care of the child and are key to delivering the child’s care plan they should feel they are working in partnership with the child’s social worker and that their contribution and work is valued and respected. As foster carers will often receive confidences from the child it is important that they have a good working relationship with the child’s social worker so that they can work together in the child’s best interests.
Clearly foster carers value their supervising social worker and want continuity. Retention is therefore equally important as recruitment.
Ensuring social workers have access to good support, training and career progression is essential to aid retention.
The Fostering Network recommends that:
all social workers who are or will be responsible for care planning for children gain relevant training and post-qualification experience of working with foster carers and children in care.
Ensure the availability and suitability of social workers to provide comprehensive support to children and foster carers.
How widespread do you believe these problems in Wales and what should be done to address them?
Based on information gained from Fosterline Wales, surveys undertaken and direct contact with foster carers practice appears to vary across Wales with inconsistent levels of support offered to carers. The support given to foster carers is often dependent on a good personal relationship between carer and social worker and between individual social workers.
An important feature of social work training is the inclusive nature of social care. Whilst the Fostering Network Wales would want to see a mandatory module on child care within the social care setting and information on fostering and being a fostered child included in social work training, it is not possible to cover the topic in the depth that is needed. All childrens social workers need specialist training prior to taking up a post and they need support and supervision into that role.
A similar model to that introduced in teaching should be considered, where additional support is given and knowledge gained in the first year which is considered as a probationary year.
What is the case for professionalising foster cares and treating them as part of the children’s services workforce?
The case for professionalization of foster care is made in the attached Fostering Network policy paper ‘Status and Authority’ Status and Authority policy and recommendations The Fostering Network Oct 2009.
The key points from that paper are :
The Fostering Network’s vision is of a society that values the important role of foster carers by recognising their status, giving them the authority they require, meeting their learning, development and support needs and ensuring they are properly remunerated.
In order for this to be achieved, the Fostering Network has long argued that the role of the foster carer must be seen as a professional one. It requires skill, knowledge, expertise, self awareness, commitment, the ability to work as part of a team, to maintain standards, and to provide a high quality, effective service to children and young people who most need it. It also requires the ability to deliver a highly personalised service, one that can often lead to foster carers and their families forming lasting relationships with the children they care for. In all of this, foster carers are key partners in the team that work together to secure the best possible outcomes for a child in care.
Fostering is highly regulated, and has the protection of children at its heart. There is no equivalent role with which to compare it, in that it encompasses both 'work' and 'family' in ways that no other profession does. Kirton D Step Forward? Step Back? – The Professionalisation of Foster Care
(2007) Being a foster carer means incorporating a professional approach to the task of caring for, or parenting, a child or young person.
The Fostering Network is recommending a national registration scheme for foster carers that would both promote and help to underpin the changes and developments that need to occur in foster care and which are articulated in Together for Change
The Fostering Network campaign, http://www.fostering.net/together-for-change.
National registration would help to confirm expectations on foster carers, raise standards, set qualification standards, oversee a learning and development framework, assist with the transfer of foster carers between agencies and the safeguarding of children.
In Wales, the Care Council consider foster carers as part of the workforce when planning services, but nowhere are they formally named as such.
As a consequence, foster carers may not be included in workforce planning and may fall in between planning arrangements for the workforce and those arrangements that cover volunteers.
5.Foster carers have to undertake training prior to being approved as a foster carer. They are offered training post approval, but a mandatory recognised training programme should be developed.
Failure to recognise the status of foster carers has the potential to undermine their ability to care for a child. For example, there are too many incidents of foster carers not being consulted about children moving on, even when they have been looking after them for months and in some cases, years. This denies the fact that the foster carer is almost inevitably the individual who knows the most about the child, as well as ignoring the relationship between the foster carer their family and the child and demonstrates a lack of respect and understanding of the contribution that they make to the life of the child in their care.
Whilst we accept, that to move immediately to a registration scheme could be very challenging this must be a long term aim if we are to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of foster carers with the skills and abilities to meet the challenges of fostering children in the care system who have complex needs .
The Fostering Network recommends :
That foster carers are named as part of the childcare workforce in Wales
A learning and development framework is developed and implemented
Foster carers are paid for the skills and knowledge they have.
Foster carers are experts undertaking a challenging but rewarding role and they must be given the recognition and support they need to make a difference to the lives of some of our most vulnerable children and young people.
