Welcome to the Spring 2018 issue of "Fostering Matters"
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Welcome to the Spring issue of "Fostering Matters", we hope you enjoy reading our newsletter. Please send any comments, news or contributions for the newsletter to our editor, Martha Holland, by replying to this email.
What are the qualities of the best foster carers?
At familyplacement.com we want the young people we care for to have a voice and to be able to tell us what they want. Earlier this month, a group of young people who are part of our Children’s Council met up. Over pizza we asked them “what are the qualities of the best foster carers?” After reaching a consensus on what they wanted to say, they painted the amazing canvas below with the attributes they had chosen.
We
think they did a brilliant job and we are going to use what they told us when we recruit new foster carers and to tell the foster carers we train what young people need from them.
Thank you to the young people who came along and gave us their time and their views, and to the foster carers who made it possible for them to attend. It was a joy to spend time in their company.
If any of the young people you care for would like to get involved in the Children’s Council or in contributing poetry, reviews and photos for the children’s newsletter, or if you would like to celebrate the achievements of the children you care for then please let us know. You can email sharon.kimber@familyplacement.com
Important announcement
OFSTED are now implementing more robustly the requirement for us to submit formal notifications of key incidents, including illness and accident injuries within 24 hours.
Can you please ensure our day time and out of hours staff are informed immediately of all incidents including illness, injuries and accidents so that we can be confident of complying fully with this regulatory requirement. Thank you.
Mentoring Newsflash
We have now agreed how our new mentoring service is going to operate and will shortly be sending out the information for the pilot and recruiting mentors from the south to be involved. In the first instance we will be recruiting six mentors to offer structured mentoring support to newly approved foster carers over an eight week period. After six months we will evaluate the scheme with a view to rolling it out across the agency.
Keep an eye on your inbox for further information.
Social Events for our Foster Carers
- North area - Saturday 16th June 2018 11am-3pm Jubilee House, Oxford
- South area - Saturday 21st April 2018 12-4pm Itchen Valley Park, Southampton
Young Person website now live!
The Young Person's website went live on 1st February. Everyone should now have their log in details. We have already received some really positive feedback from young people as well as ideas of how to improve things. Alyson Graham has taken over the Child Participation service and she will update you about the website in future editions. Thanks to everyone who was involved in getting this off the ground.
Don't be silent
Written by one of our children:
Courage is a hard thing to conjure up. It can be a struggle and it can be strange. It can make you powerful and brave. So that’s why you must have it. Channel it to be strong, to be heard. Because you deserve to be heard and to be listened to. I was once scared and afraid but I learned that to escape darkness I had to see the light. The light being, standing up against people who didn’t care about me or my family. Against bullies and those who don’t understand who I am. We all deserve to express who we are and what we love, as that is what makes us who we are. Our voices are meant to be heard so don’t be silent. Be loud, be YOU. At the end of the day, it’s only your opinion of yourself that matters.Don’t be silent - A.L.
Meet the team
We chatted to Lisa, our Assistant Placements Co-ordinator in our Hampshire Office.
Q. How long have you worked at familyplacement.com?
A. I’ve been here three years now, and it has flown by.
Q. What did you do before coming here?
A. I spent some time as a debt collector, which was interesting and very different from this job, I’d say it wasn’t always easy. I also worked as an admin manager, which was preferable to being outside in all weathers.
Q. What’s your favourite part of your job?
A. I really enjoy speaking with foster carers, finding out about them and it's wonderful making successful placements for children and young people and hearing about how they are thriving in the care of our great foster carers.
Q. Favourite way to spend an evening?
A. Having all the family over for tea and playing with the grandchildren, safe in the knowledge that they will be going home with their parents!
Foster Carer Recruitment Advisers
We are very pleased to announce that our Recruitment Advisers have now completed their training and will soon be starting to complete initial visits. In the North we have Jono Atmore, Tim Andrews, Sue Hately and Katherine Harper. In the South we have Sharon Davies, Brenda Tasker and Caron Buckingham. I know everyone is really looking forward to the challenge and we will all be meeting up over the next few months to discuss how the pilot is going. Look out for a profile from one of the Recruitment Advisers in the next newsletter and an update on how they are finding their new role.
Training update
Many of our foster carers have already started their training and development programme for this year with Safeguarding workshops happening in all areas throughout January and February.
Later this year we will be rolling out new, extended training, the Fostering Changes Programme. This will initially be available in Swindon and Wickham and then other areas shortly afterwards. The Fostering Changes Programme is designed to enable carers to further develop their skills in managing difficult behaviour and building relationships with the children in their care, whilst covering issues such as attachment and educational attainment.
We are also pleased to now be able to provide a greater variety of online workshops for specific training needs that cannot be met through face to face training. Full details of online courses available can be found in the 2018 foster carer training programme.
By now our carers should all be booked onto our training development programme for 2018.
We hope that you are happy with the training being provided both at workshops and online. If you have any feedback with regard to training; courses, venues, etc. please do not hesitate to contact me at Melissa.canning@familyplacement.com
Update
We have reviewed our management and staffing arrangements to facilitate the continued growth of our agency and the implementation of our 2018 service improvement plans. We are pleased to be able to confirm the following changes:
- Dawn Jeffs, Team Manager of our Witney Social Work Team, will be taking on the Registered Manager role for the agency from April 2018. Andy Clipson will be taking over the Responsible Person role from Melissa Canning from this date. Melissa will continue in her Quality Assurance Manager role.
- Alyson Graham, Team Manager in our Hampshire Office, took over the lead responsibility for child participation from Lara Rowlinson from 1st February 2018. Rachel Leason will be working with Alyson to facilitate the provision of “Play and Say” events across our North Area team. Sharon Kimber will continue to run these events in the South. Lara will continue to manage our fostering panel and will be leading on new arrangements for the follow up of enquiries from prospective foster carers.
- Congratulations are extended to Becky McGrory who has recently been appointed to the newly created post of Assistant Team Manager within our North Area Team. In this new role, Becky will be responsible for supervising two of the North Area Team Social Workers and chairing of foster carer reviews. She will also continue to support a small number of her existing foster carers.
- We'd also like to send a warm welcome to our newly approved foster carers: Ina & Patrick and James & Emma. Welcome to our fostering team!.
Service Developments
Foster carers will shortly be able to access all of the guidance that was previously in the printed foster carer handbooks, and much more, by logging on to the Foster Carer space on our website (you will receive your log-in shortly).
We are continuing to work on fully implementing our CHARMS software. We have decided to give priority to enabling our foster carers to submit their recording via CHARMS. We will be running refresher recording training across 2018 to facilitate this process. Watch this space!
We have reviewed our foster carer recruitment scheme and have decided to test out some new arrangements. Under the terms of the existing scheme, foster carers are paid a £300 bonus for helping us to recruit more foster carers. In the past, this bonus amount has been paid when the new carer takes their first child. Under new arrangements some of this bonus will be paid at an earlier stage. Fuller details will be announced shortly.
STOP PRESS
Fostering summer camp 2019
We are looking at arranging a summer camp for all foster carers and their children in the summer of 2019.
We hope there will be enough interest to make this a possibility. In order to gauge this, please can you complete the survey sent to you by your social worker.
We would really like to make this happen and will ensure that there are activities suitable for all ages.
