Activity Days for Fostering: Learning from three pilot events September 2017

Key learning from the three pilot events

• Each event was very different in terms of the outcomes and learning, however where agencies are open to utilising the independent fostering sector and neighbouring Local Authorities from within their region a higher matching rate is achieved.
• Future events would need to be cost effective and agencies fully signed up to an agreed post event policy for planning placement moves between authorities and IFAs as well as an agreed protocol for the sharing of information about foster carers subsequently linked with children.
• Young people identified for placements should be able to move in a timely way. Bureaucratic delays caused by agencies not working together detracts away from the ethos and benefit of young people being involved in their own family finding.
  Act on the fact that children will be significantly older than those children attending adoption events when preparing and managing fostering events. Preparation needs to be appropriate for young people who need to be more actively involved in their own family finding. Existing preparation materials will need to be further revised for young people over the age of ten.
• All future events should encourage the attendance of foster carers own children and existing placed children. This worked very well in practice and some excellent outcomes were noted due to the interactions between young people awaiting a permanent placement and existing placed children of a similar age.  A benefit for agencies was that some existing short term placement vacancies subsequently became vacant and able to be utilised again for emergency placements.
• None of the Agencies invited approved adopters who were also open to fostering on a permanent basis, despite the fact that they believed that there were surplus adopters who may have wanted to attend.
• Foster carers made good use of the events to seek suitable matches for current long term vacancies by encouraging their own children (birth or placed) to attend. This was a good opportunity for both the foster carers and the child’s social worker to observe the interactions between children and inform themselves about the potential suitability of the proposed placement.
• The writing of profiles for both children and foster carers is not as well established as practice within fostering as it is in adoption. Agencies are doing a disservice to their own foster carers if they do not have an up to date profile (or a profile at all). The independent providers  routinely provided carer profiles to the Local Authorities to share.