Events archive

The Good Practice Guide, Safeguarding Children living with Foster Carers, Adopters and Special Guardians: Learning from case reviews 2007–2019, is based on a UK wide study of 52 case reviews concerning 98 children who had experienced serious harm while living with foster carers, adopters or special guardians. The study spans 12 years and is the first to focus exclusively on reviews of cases of children in alternative family care. It shines a spotlight on those issues particular to these children – selection and assessment of carers; support for children and carers; and the supervision and management of arrangements.

Join us for a new open course which 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. Ashley will encourage you to investigate different manifestations of unconscious bias in a safe and supportive format. This is an EDI session like no other and promises to be fun as well as thought provoking.

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This half-day training is aimed at local authority professionals – both social workers and lawyers - who are involved in the placement of children currently living in the UK with kinship carers overseas on a Hague Convention Adoption Order. It will provide an overview of the legal and practice issues regarding Convention Adoption for children being placed abroad. There will then be ample time to discuss issues regarding Convention Adoption overseas cases during case studies and group discussion.

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.

MEMBERS ONLY
Rebekah Pierre is a care-experienced author, social worker and campaigner & Emma Fincham is a social worker and fostering consultant. In this webinar they will explore how thinking, speaking and writing about young people directly impacts on increasing or decreasing their opportunities, their choices and decisions available to them.

Creative Life Story Work is a new approach to helping care-experienced children and young people understand their own life stories. The approach is led by Blue Cabin, a North East of England -based charity which transforms outcomes for care-experienced children and young people, and is based on the Rose model of Therapeutic Life Story Work. Between 2020 and 2021, Creative Life Story Work was rolled out in three local authorities in the North East of England: Gateshead, Darlington and South Tyneside, with funding from What Works Centre for Social Care. This session focuses on an introduction to CLSW and research conducted by Coram impact and evaluation and Ipsos Mori.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
On the 27 September, Terry will be joined by a panel consisting of Anne Longfield, CBE, Cllr. Bryony Goodliffe, CCC, Cllr. Jemima Laing, PCC, Florence Chiwetu and two young people supported by CoramVoice to discuss, debate and share his vision of a more equitable future for care-experienced people. We will also be discussing the pathways and priorities for bringing “care experienced” under the protection of law and what this could mean for policy and practice. Our Chair is Ellen Broomé, Managing Director of CoramBAAF. Join us at 11.30am. for our key Members' Week event. 

FREE FOR MEMBERS
A webinar led by our kinship care consultants, Ann Horne and Clare Seth, exploring the challenges and complexities of care planning in kinship care. In the webinar, Ann and Clare will map out the care planning journey from early identification of potential carers to securing legal permanence. They will explore the challenges including assessment, regulations and guidance but also offer suggestions for good practice.

This course explores 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 at times conflicting role of the supervising social worker, who needs to balance providing support with the need to at times have difficult conversations too. Further areas explored include foster care reviews and managing allegations. This training will combine theory, practical exercises and opportunities to reflect, to meet the learning needs of both social workers new to the role and those who are more experienced.

Exposure to domestic abuse can have long-term consequences for children’s health and development. These may not be immediately apparent once children have been removed from an abusive home and are living with alternative carers. The impact of domestic abuse can be missed in assessment and planning, resulting in children not receiving the level of care and support they need.

This Good Practice Guide is the first to focus primarily on supporting children who have witnessed or experienced domestic abuse prior to coming into care. It offers information on how domestic abuse affects children at different ages and stages in their development, the care these children need, and how best to assess, prepare and support them and the families caring for them.