Events archive

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 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.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
This essential and exciting webinar gave an overview of Micro-aggressions which are subtle forms of discrimination that are often unintentional but can have a significant impact on the well-being of individuals. Presented by Charlotte Andrew, Proud 2B Parents with a panel of foster carers and adopters.

This half day course is aimed at professionals who work with children and families who may benefit from a therapeutic intervention and would like to increase their understanding of different therapeutic approaches.

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.

In 2015 research, conducted jointly between the UK children’s charity Coram and the University of Bristol found great variation in the quality of life story books across England and Wales with many being of poor quality. The same research found that children were largely poorly prepared to explore their histories, adoption professionals and agencies did not seem to prioritise life story books, and that adopters felt poorly prepared in how to use and update life story books with their children.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
This session focused primarily on supporting children who have witnessed or experienced domestic abuse prior to coming into care. It offered 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. Presented by Hedy Cleaver and Wendy Rose OBE.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
Very little is known about what it is like to be a carer for a sibling, or being brought up by your older sister or brother. This session will focus on the findings from a narrative study focused on the experiences of these sibling-headed families, and practitioner experiences in assessing and supporting them. Our presenter is Lorna Stabler. Lorna has been a Research Associate at CASCADE, Cardiff University for five years and is currently an ESRC funded PhD student at DECIPHer, Cardiff University.

The open course will help to increase the understanding of the supervisory requirements of supervising social workers, in line with fostering legislation. It will look at roles and responsibilities in relation to safeguarding children and young people and how foster carers can be supported and developed in their role.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
Permanence remains the goal of children’s social care. But ensuring that children from troubled backgrounds grow up in ‘stable homes, built on love’ (Department for Education 2023) is inevitably a challenge in all forms of permanence. Emeritus Professor Gillian Schofield OBE and Dr. Birgit Larsson deliver their assessment of long-term foster care as a permanence option by sharing the messages from 25 years' of research at the University of East Anglia.