Events archive

This course will enable participants to explore how ongoing life story work contributes to children's and young people's understanding of their past, present and future.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
Despite the long-standing policy push to include young people’s perspectives in their mental health care, research about young people with social work involvement has consistently shown that they feel they are not listened to. We examine the notes of 70 young people with a social worker (comprising 16,566 unique case notes) accessing one Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). Our team of five researchers, including three experts-by-experiences, applied discourse analyses to the notes to examine how these young people’s knowledge of their lives and needs was situated.

Foster carers are susceptible to allegations and/or complaints which will impact on the whole fostering household and their future as care givers. How should we as a profession respond to these situations in a sensitive, timely manner, whilst giving due regard to the safeguarding of children as well as the needs of carers and their household? This open course will address the process for distinguishing standards of care concerns from allegations or complaints, with opportunities to share good practice in recruiting, reviewing and supporting foster carers.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
Virtual Schools have been a feature of the landscape in Scotland since 2019 and England since 2014 yet a series of recent publications have pointed towards a poor understanding of the valuable work they carry out. This session is an opportunity to hear from the Centre for Excellence for Children's Care and Protection (CELCIS) in Scotland and the National Association of Virtual School Heads (NAVSH) in England on how virtual schools support care experienced children and young people.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
Join us for a keynote address on the importance of modernising contact arrangements in adoption, fostering and kinship care by Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division.

FREE FOR MEMBERS
Join our Kinship Consultants Ann Horne and Clare Seth for a session exploring how kinship families can be supported to enable children to stay in touch with the important people in their lives. Using case studies from their own practice experience, Clare and Ann will reflect together on the uniqueness of each kinship family, what support was needed, and what worked.

Panel advisors have a complex role in managing the relationship between the agency and the panel, quality assuring and feeding back to all involved in panel work. This open course will enable panel advisors to examine this role in detail and build on effective practice as they carry out their role and responsibilities including: quality assurance; inducting new panel members; contributing to the appraisals of panel members; feeding back issues to the agency and working with the agency decision maker. Case scenarios, group work and practice application will provide opportunities for panel advisors to address shared dilemmas and good practice.

This course is designed to support those who have previously attended “The role of the supervising social worker in supervising and supporting foster carers” and now looking to develop their practice further.
On this course you will explore 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 balancing the potentially conflicting role of the supervising social worker, who needs to balance providing support with the need to sometimes have difficult conversations too.

The responsibilities of a Chair can be considerable. Whereas some duties may be clearly outlined in related practice guidance along with the qualities that ensure effective chairing, not all Chair responsibilities are so helpfully detailed or provided. This workshop will explore general planning for and facilitation of panels and complex meetings in the children’s sector. It will explore time management and group facilitation whilst holding the child at the centre of thinking, recommendations and decision making. It will enable Chairs of meetings to consider good practice and approaches to effectively managing the flow of information, summarising and the formation of key action plans.

This open course will offer a comprehensive approach to undertaking sibling assessments. It will explore who the key contributors to sibling assessments are and how assessors can plan assessments and engage these contributors in the process. Most importantly it will explore how to gain the views of the children, observe sibling interactions and draw conclusions on the quality of sibling relationships as well as focusing on the individual needs of each child and of the sibling group.