Handbook
for
Carers
www.edinburgh.gov.uk/fostering
Welcome to your updated Carers’ Handbook - online!
We hope you will find the new and updated information contained here helpful. We have spent over a year interviewing carer groups, providing clarity on finance and compiling updates to legislation.
Our new Handbook is online so that we can update it more often and it will always be available to you. This replaces any previous issues, so you can recycle your old handbook.
The fostering landscape is always changing, so if you spot anything you think needs updating, please get in touch by email: , phone: 0131 200 4000, or speak to your worker.
We have made this online resource searchable, so you can enter a keyword to take you directly to the section you need. We hope you will find this resource a useful part of your fostering toolkit for years to come.
Best wishes
Scott Dunbar
Service Manager for Looked After and City Wide Services.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Legal Context
1.1. Communities and Families Service
1.2. Family Based Care
1.3. Care Standards
1.4. The Registration and Inspection of Foster Care services
1.5. The legal context of fostering
2. Working with Children
2.1. Fostering panels
2.2. Reviews
2.3. Foster Carer Agreement and Child's Planning Agreement
2.4. Confidentiality
2.5. Recording and Report writing
2.6. Child Protection Procedures
2.7. Child Protection Case Conferences and Core Groups
2.8. Allegations and Complaints
2.9. Serious incidents and accidents
3. Finance
3.1. Information on fee payments
3.2. Information on allowances
3.3. Equipment
3.4. Insurance
3.5. Carers' holidays
3.6. Administration of fees and allowances
3.7. Tax, National Insurance and Pensions
3.8. Benefits and Children with Disabilities
4. Carer Placements
4.1. Carer placements
4.2. When a child is placed
4.3. The different types of care
4.4. Private Foster Care
4.5. Valuing diversity
4.6. Bullying and anti-discriminatory practice
4.7. The child's plan
4.8. Review of the child's plan
4.9. Independent support for children in foster care
4.10. Complaints by children and young people
4.11. Family Group decision making
4.12. Contact between children and their family and friends
4.13. Education of children
4.14. The child's important paperwork
4.15. Ending placements
4.16. Adoption/Permanent Care - preparation and placing children
4.17. Other issues concerning placement endings
4.18. Children being moved by the Department against the carer's wishes
4.19. When a child is removed without permission
4.20. Children who go missing
4.21. Preparation for adult life
5. Support
5.1. Role of the Family Based Care social worker
5.2. Role of the child's social worker
5.3. Emergency Social Work Service
5.4. Support groups
5.5. Opportunities for carers in developing services
5.6. Carer training, support and development
5.7. Helpful organisations
5.8. Carers' safety
5.9. Foster Carers' own needs
5.10. Carers' children
6. Health and Safety
6.1. Health and safety
6.2. Looked After and Accommodated Nurses
6.3. Edinburgh Connect
6.4. Health Assessments
6.5. Consents and confidentiality
6.6. Storage of medicines
6.7. Smoking
6.8. Drugs and alcohol
6.9. Sleep problems
6.10. Pregnancy in young people
6.11. Developing a Safe Caring policy
6.12. Children with disabilities
6.13. Sleeping accommodation
6.14. Babysitting/childcare
6.15. Overnight stays
6.16. Internet safety
6.17. Household pets
6.18. Safety in the home/travel
6.19. Firearms
6.20. Leisure/hobbies/safety and outdoor activities
6.21. Proof of identity
6.22. Care and Control
6.23. Searching personal belongings/room
7. Useful numbers
1.1 Communities and Families Service
Family Based Care is a centralised service within the Children’s Services division of the council Communities and Families services.
Seven priorities have been agreed by the Children’s Services division and its partners, for example police and health: These are held within CEC Children and Families Service Plan 2015-2018*.
• improving support so that problems are identified and addressed early
• improving educational outcomes for the lowest achieving 20 per cent of children with particular focus on early literacy skills
• improving outcomes and life chances for Looked After Children
• improving children’s and young people’s health outcomes, including healthy weight, emotional and mental health, sexual health and drug and alcohol misuse
• tackling youth crime and reducing anti social behaviour
• increasing the number of young people in positive destinations
• continuing to improve outcomes for children in need of protection.
*Report can be obtained from your FBC SW.
1.2 Family Based Care
Family Based Care‘s own mission statement and principles are based on the Department’s aims, legislation and care standards. The agreed mission statement is:
Each child or young person who needs to be cared for or looked after in a family-based resource is provided with a placement that meets his or her needs, when he or she needs it and for as long as needed.
To meet this, the principles underpinning Family Based Care services are to:
1. Have the needs, rights and views of children and young people at their heart.
2. Be designed and delivered in ways that encourage children’s and young people’s physical, cognitive and emotional development, their attachments, their resilience and safety and discourage further damage, discontinuity, loss and rejection in their lives.
3. Support parents and relatives to be appropriately involved in the care of their children.
4. Promote equal opportunities and value diversity among children and young people, parents, carers and staff.
5. Recruit and retain, or buy in, a sufficient number of good quality carers.
6. Value the carers with whom they work, recompensing, supporting and appraising them in their complex, demanding and time-consuming roles.
7. Value the staff delivering services, managing and supporting them to achieve high standards of practice.
8. Work collaboratively among their own staff, with carers and with other staff, both within the City of Edinburgh Council and other agencies with which they work. Be efficient and consistent in their planning and decision-making and have processes that are readily understood by all of the groups.
9. Develop policies and procedures that assist their work and the work of others in the Department. Adhere to legislation (Acts and Regulations) at all times and follow government guidance and departmental policies except where there is a demonstrably good reason not to do so.
10. Measure, evaluate and disseminate findings about the impact of their interventions. Continuously improve.
11. Provide best value for money.
1.3 Care standards
National Care Standards, developed by the Scottish Government, provide nationally agreed standards for the levels of service to be provided for carers and for the children and young people who are looked after by them. The aim of the standards is to improve the quality and consistency of services for children and young people in foster care.
The standards cover:
• recruiting, selecting, approving, training and supporting foster carers
• children and young people with foster carers
• supporting and monitoring foster carers
• the work of the agency fostering panels and other approval panels.
The Care Standards are available online by searching National Care Standards at – www.gov.scot/publications
1.4 The registration and inspection of foster care services
The Care Inspectorate administers and inspects a range of services, including fostering and adoption services. They inspect and evaluate services annually against the care standards. Other than day carers, who have to be registered child minders, individual carers are not registered and inspected.
Carers may be asked to take part in these inspections by attending focus groups, individual interviews or providing information to help the Care Inspectors. The Annual Inspection reports are available on the Care Inspectorate website - www.careinspectorate.com
See also section 2.8 about making complaints to the Care Inspectorate.
1.5 The legal context of fostering
The ways that children are ‘accommodated’ and the ways that foster care is provided are determined by law. The main statutes that you need to be aware of are:
· The Children (Scotland) Act 1995
· The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007
· The Looked After Children (Scotland) Regulations 2009.
· The Children’s Hearing (Scotland) Act 2011
· The Children and Young People(Scotland) Act 2014
· The Looked After Children(Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2014
For those of you who are caring, or are hoping to care, for a child on a permanent basis, the main legislation is:
· The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007
· The Adoption Agencies (Scotland) Regulations 2009
· The Adoption Support Services and Allowances (Scotland) Regulations 2009.
Click on www.legislation.gov.uk to search the Act or Regulations. It is not necessary for carers to have in depth knowledge of legislation unless this is something about which you have a particular interest. The main points are described below.
How do children become looked after and accommodated?
You will hear the children you care for described in a number of ways, for instance ‘looked after’, ‘looked after and accommodated’, ‘looked after away from home’ and ‘in care’. The correct terminology is ‘looked after and accommodated’ although ‘looked after away from home’ is also an accurate description. The term ‘in care’ went out of date when the 1995 Act was implemented but is still regularly used.
In order for a child to become looked after and accommodated they have to meet certain legal criteria:
• Their parents, or persons with parental responsibilities, must have agreed to them being accommodated by the local authority or the local authority has found that there is no one who has parental responsibilities or the child is lost or abandoned. This is called section 25 accommodation or is sometimes called voluntary accommodation. If the parent asks to take the child back, this cannot be prevented unless the social worker successfully applies to prevent this in one of the ways described below. However, if a child has been accommodated continuously for more than six months under section 25, the parent has to give 14 days notice.
• The child has been made subject of a supervision order by a children’s hearing and this includes a direction that the child does not live at home. There are a range of grounds specified that can lead the children’s hearing to make a supervision order, for instance that the child is beyond control or likely to suffer unnecessarily because of a lack of parental care. The supervision order usually contains directions concerning the frequency of contact between the child and parent and may contain directions about other matters. Parents cannot remove children subject to supervision orders from foster carers without the children’s hearing agreeing to this.
• The child is subject to an order, authorisation or warrant. The ones you are most likely to come across are a child protection order (CPO) or an Interim Compulsory Supervision Order (ICSO). A CPO is an emergency order, made by a sheriff, which allows the local authority to remove the child from home immediately. CPOs are used when the level of concern for the child is so great that it is assessed that it is not possible to wait for a children’s hearing to be held. CPOs are time limited. An Interim Compulsory Supervision Order is made by a children’s hearing when the panel decides that the child should be in a place of safety immediately. This might be with foster carers, with kinship carers, in residential care or in hospital dependent on the child’s needs.
Whichever legal way the child or children living with you is accommodated, you should ensure that you get a copy of the order.
There are a number of people or organisations you may hear about or meet when a child is accommodated. A brief description of them is as follows:
The Children’s Reporter: Not to be confused with a journalist, the reporter works for the Scottish Children’s Reporter’s Administration (SCRA). The reporter is usually a trained lawyer but may be a social worker. It is their job to decide whether sufficient ‘grounds’ exist for a case to be referred to a children’s hearing. Where parents or children contest the grounds, there has to be a ‘grounds hearing’ in front of a sheriff.
The Sheriff: The sheriff is the equivalent of a judge in most other countries. As well as grounds hearings, they hear appeals concerning children’s hearings decisions and they make decisions in permanence order and adoption cases.
The Children’s Panel is made up of volunteers from a range of backgrounds who are interested in helping children. Three of them have to be present at children’s hearings. They meet with the child, unless the child is excused from attendance, the parents, the social worker, often school staff and other ‘relevant people’. Foster carers are often accepted as relevant persons and you will be asked to attend to give your views to the hearing. It is an offence not to attend. The panel has to determine whether a supervision order is needed and, if so, whether the child can be supervised at home or whether he or she needs to be accommodated away from home.
Safeguarders can be appointed by a children’s hearing or a court when they consider that they need an independent person to investigate what will be in the best interests of a child.
Curators ad litem are appointed by the court in adoption cases and permanence order applications. Again they are independent of the court and the local authority and their duty is to safeguard and report on the best interests of the child.
What are our duties towards accommodated children?
Once a child is accommodated, the local authority has a number of legal duties towards him or her:
• to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare, taking the welfare of the child as their paramount concern. Social workers must visit accommodated children at least every three months but many will need more frequent visits. They must also have a written child’s plan and review it regularly
• to make use of services that would be available for children were they cared for by their parents
• if achievable and in their best interests, to place siblings together or geographically close.
• to take steps to promote regular and direct contact between a child and anyone with parental responsibilities provided this is consistent with safeguarding the child’s welfare.
• to provide advice and assistance with a view to the time when the child is no longer looked after
• to find out and have regard to the views of the child, his or her parents and any other relevant person, when making decisions about a child
• to take account, so far as is achievable, of the child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background.
As foster carers, you will play a key role in helping us to meet these duties. It is also important that you do not, either by mistake or purposefully, do something that is in conflict with these duties.
2.1 Fostering panels
The City of Edinburgh Council’s Fostering Panels are set up under Regulation 17 of the Looked After Children (Scotland) Regulations 2009. The fostering panels’ roles include:
• making recommendations to the Agency Decision Maker (senior manager) on the approval and remit of prospective foster carers and day carers
• agreeing the remit details, e.g. age, gender and number of children, or approval to care for a specific child known to the applicants