2020 has been a challenging year for everyone and the stresses caused by coronavirus and lockdown have impacted all of us. This impact has been felt by the children and young people we provide care for at St Christopher’s. Being in care, on the edge of care or leaving care can be a challenging experience for young people as they miss out on having the family structure that many other young people rely on for support. This can have a particular impact in stressful times such as these when we all need to rely on the support of those closest to us to get us through. In times like these, the care we provide young people is so important as we are the homes and families that they draw on for support. We provide a caring and supportive environment in which young people can grow and fulfil their potential. To ensure this, we listen to our young people and let them guide the support we provide. This is so important in helping young people feel in control of what’s going on around them and their futures. The young people we care for are resilient and look forward to the future. We want to ensure young people can thrive while with us and once they go on to live independently, and to do this, we have made sure to continue delivering all our services over the course of the last year. We aim to continue delivering services in the coming year to help our young people grow and fulfil their ambitions. To do this, we need the help of generous members of the public to enable us to keep delivering this care and support to young people now and in the year ahead. Your donation will help our young people adapt to the changing circumstances they face and build the resilience to grow and thrive in care and once they begin to live independently. Make a donation to our Christmas Appeal today. Source: www.stchris.org.uk Location: Professional Fostercare Contract type: Fixed term End date: Maternity Cover Hours: 37 Salary: £28,631 - £37,414 Closing Date: 4 December 2020 Interview Date: 14 December 2020 About Barnardo's
At Barnardo's we believe in children – no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through. Please read about our basis and values following the link below. You will be asked questions relating to them as part of the recruitment process for this role. Barnardo's is committed to having a diverse and inclusive workforce for staff and volunteers. We actively encourage applications from disabled, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic and male candidates as they are under-represented within Barnardo's. Our basis and values Interested in joining a dynamic team providing family placements for looked after children? Barnardo's is recruiting a Family Placement Social Worker to join our established fostering service. This is a full time permanent post with the additional opportunity to join a waiting list for other vacancies that may arise within the service. Working base to be agreed on appointment and flexible working considered. When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification, Job Description and Additional Information document. This should be done with an understanding of the context of the service described. Full details and application documents here Location: Swindon Trailblazer, Swindon Contract type: Permanent Hours: 36.25 Salary: £43,096.00 - £55,371.00 Closing Date: 4 December 2020 Interview Date: W/C 14 December 2020 Wiltshire and Dorset Locality - work base to be determined (Previous applicants need not apply)
At Barnardo's, our purpose is to transform the lives of the UK's most vulnerable children and our vision is to realise Thomas Barnardo's dream of a world where no child is turned away from the help that they need. We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced Children's Services leader to help shape and support Barnardo's strategy. We are an organisation that focuses where possible on early intervention and prevention, assisting families to achieve the best outcomes possible. You will be leading our Wiltshire and Dorset Locality, where we are key stakeholders particularly in Swindon Borough Council and the County of Wiltshire in the provision of Mental Health and Wellbeing Services. Our other services involve family support work in Dorset and disability work across Wiltshire. We are looking for an individual who has substantial experience in managing and developing services to meet the needs of children, young people and families as we have the ambition to increase our footprint. You will play an intrinsic part in our regional Cymru and South West Senior Leadership Team to ensure stable high quality services. We are looking for someone preferably who has lead children's mental health and wellbeing services, with an understanding of change management, and service design. You will need to have great interpersonal skills combined with excellent leadership and management experience, with a passion to improve the lives of our most vulnerable children and young people – is this you? At Barnardo's we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and we expect all staff and volunteers to share in this commitment. Our safer recruitment processes mean that the safety and welfare of the child is paramount at every stage of the process and therefore, we adopt rigorous scrutiny in our pre-employment checking. This post is subject to a range of pre-employment checks including a Criminal Records Enhanced Disclosure for the successful candidate. About Barnardo's At Barnardo's we believe in children – no matter who they are, what they have experienced. Please read about our basis and values following the link below. You will be asked questions relating to them as part of the recruitment process for this role. Barnardo's is committed to having a diverse and inclusive workforce for staff and volunteers. We actively encourage applications from disabled, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic and male candidates as they are under-represented within Barnardo's. Our basis and values Full details and application documents here Member News: “The whole organisation is child centric”, celebrates report on St Christopher’s17/11/2020
St Christopher’s has been awarded the Customer Service Excellence Award for the tenth year running, with six areas of our work identified as going above and beyond expectations. Since 2011 the CSE Award has marked us on how we respond to the needs of the children and young people in our care, as well as our local authority partners, supporters and staff teams. This year we were awarded six areas of Compliance Plus, which refers to “[behaviours] or practices which exceed the requirements of the standard and are viewed as exceptional or as exemplar to others”. These include:
Chief Executive Jonathan Whalley said: “This report is a glowing evaluation of all the services that make up St Christopher’s. Considering the global events of 2020, it would be easy for us to drop the ball – however, this report just proves how much our staff have stepped up and continued to excel in their care and support for young people.” You can read a copy of the report here. Source: www.stchris.org.uk Official statistics show 3% increase in filled places, from 2019-20, but with unavailable places also rising and an ageing population of carers, Ofsted warns of trouble for the future. Fostering capacity remains “not anywhere near enough to meet demand”, despite a small increase in capacity revealed by official statistics released today, Ofsted has warned. The inspectorate estimated that there were 89,200 approved fostering places as of March 2020, 1% up on the figure a year previously of 88,370, based on data submitted by agencies. While filled places rose by 3% to 56,500, there was also an increase, from 15,465 to 16,555 (7%), in the number of approved places that were not available, for example, because of carers taking a break or due to the needs of children currently in placement. The statistics come against a backdrop of year-on-year increases in the care population, and widespread evidence of substantial pressures on places, leading to children being placed far from home or in unregulated provision. The figures also showed that two-thirds of carers were aged over 50, with a quarter over 60. ‘Storing up trouble for the future’ Commenting on the figures, Ofsted’s national director for regulation and social care, Yvette Stanley, said: “Although today’s statistics show a small rise in foster carers and places, there still isn’t anywhere near enough to meet demand. The difficulty in recruiting carers with the right skills and experience, along with what is potentially an aging carer population, is a mix that could be storing up trouble for the future.” She said addressing the problem, as well as the urgent need for more residential provision, had to be a priority for the government’s long-awaited care review, which children’s minister Vicky Ford said last week would be launched imminently. The figures follow last week’s report by Ofsted on the challenges of matching children with foster families. This found that the shortage of carers was the biggest barrier to successful matches, particularly for siblings, disabled children and teenagers, which meant that “making a decision about the best place for a child to live was often a tricky balancing act between looking for what was ideal and what was possible”. The matching study – which was carried out last summer but whose findings were still relevant, said Ofsted – was based on case studies of 24 children and focus groups with professionals in four local authorities, meetings with independent fostering agencies and birth parents of children who had been fostered, and online surveys of children in foster care, carers, former foster children and fostering service managers. The report stressed that there was much councils and agencies could do beyond recruitment, and social workers Ofsted spoke to were able to identify what worked and what could have gone better in terms of successful matching. ‘Little evidence’ good practice learned from However, Ofsted found “little evidence…that this has translated into wider organisational learning that could improve practice across the whole service”. For example, meetings to consider learning from placement breakdowns were not always held, even when required by local authority policy. It said there were several areas of practice that could improve, particularly in relation to making the matching process more child-centred. Over two-thirds of children in foster care who responded to Ofsted’s survey felt they had not been asked about their wishes and feelings before they moved into their foster home, while very few of those who were consulted felt their views had made a difference.. Ofsted said that, when children were involved, this helped family finders know what they were looking for in a foster family, help prospective carers know what was important to children and made it more likely that children would feel that decisions were being made in their best interests. Also, it found that few survey respondents with past or current experience of care received information about their foster home before they moved in, with those that did receiving it too late to help them prepare for the move. This was despite the study finding that being informed helped children to settle, particularly when they were shown pictures of the family, empowered them to ask questions about their prospective carers and helped them start seeing themselves as part of the family. Lack of information for carers Similarly, carers felt that the information they received about the children coming to live with them was variable. Though, perhaps unsurprisingly, information sharing was worse when children were moved in an emergency, Ofsted found that, in several cases, information gaps were not filled after the child moved in. Carers also said they found information from previous carers of the child to be “invaluable”, but it was sometimes left to them to initiate liaison with previous carers, rather than it being facilitated by the local authority. The study also found that carers who were treated as professionals were typically more likely to feel empowered to ask questions about the child, including from previous carers, though in most areas this was embedded in practice. Ofsted also said social workers needed to do more to help carers support contact between the child and their birth family, with fewer than half of carers surveyed saying their supervising social worker helped them to do so. The inspectorate also said social workers and foster carers needed more training in helping trans-cultural matches work more effectively, with matches more likely to be influenced by carers’ availability, location, skills and experience, rather than ethnicity, religion or cultural background. The report’s conclusions were broadly welcomed by fostering and care organisations. Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of children in care charity Become, echoed Ofsted’s conclusion that matching need to be centred around a child’s background, wishes and needs and that this needed to be a theme in the care review, which the “government needs to bring forward with urgency”. “Children and young people in care should always feel their views are important and are meaningfully listened to and acted upon – whether that’s by social workers, foster carers or other professionals in the system,” she added. Kevin Williams, chief executive of The Fostering Network, said the charity welcomed the report’s focus on maintaining relationships with previous carers and that “relationships between children and their previous foster carers are too often overlooked, and more needs to be done to support these relationships”. TACT, the largest voluntary fostering agency, said that it was pleased that the report highlighted the importance of providing carers with “balanced, full and asset-based information” about the child, with too often information being “partial and focused on negative factors”. Government recruitment efforts ‘ignoring fostering’ However, TACT also stressed the problem of there being insufficient carers to provide suitable matches, and criticised the Department for Education’s emphasis on adoption – set out most recently in a speech last month by education secretary Gavin Williamson. “It is clear that we need additional foster carers, but again and again the DfE are prepared to fund national advertising campaigns to encourage people to adopt while ignoring fostering,” said TACT. “At this unprecedented time when so many people are having to look to make a change in their lives it is an ideal opportunity for a national advertising campaign to promote fostering. Having a sufficient pool of foster families would have a very positive impact on matching and the on the lives of many vulnerable children.” The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) also emphasised the national shortage of carers in its response, saying this would be exacerbated by the pandemic, and needed to be addressed through the care review. The extent of the pressures on the system was also highlighted by Harvey Gallagher, chief executive of the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers. “Certainly, the pressure on local authorities to find foster carers for children at short notice is one such significant pressure,” he said. “This may mean that local authorities can only consider those foster carers who have an appropriate vacancy that day, not even next week or soon afterwards. Children may then have little say in where they will be living. Matching can be seen as a luxury when time and availability is against a local authority, and that should never be the case.” Source: www.communitycare.co.uk Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, has published a set of reports showing how the children’s residential social care system is broken and is failing many of the most vulnerable children, in particular those who are most at risk of falling through gaps in the system and becoming victims of criminal or sexual exploitation. Today’s reports are the start of a series of interventions by the Children’s Commissioner this month on the issue of children’s social care. The first report, ‘The children who no-one knows what to do with’, is the culmination of three years of wide-ranging research into children’s homes. It highlights the issues faced by certain groups of children in care for whom the system is not working, including:
The paper details the experiences of these children, including constant moves. One teenager talked of being placed 8 hours from her hometown and not seeing her Mum for months. Other children say they felt “dumped” in areas they had never heard of and could not identify on a map, only to then be isolated at home for months waiting for a school place. The second report published today, ‘Private provision in children’s social care’, explores the growth of private companies providing foster placements and children’s homes. It warns there is a clear lack of planning and oversight for the market, leading to an increasingly fragmented, uncoordinated and irrational market. Private provision accounts for 73% of the growth in the number of children in care between 2011 and 2019. The number of children in in homes provided by the private sector has grown by 42% over this period whereas local authority provision has not kept pace and has actually shrunk in some areas. The Children’s Commissioner argues that the responsibility for making the system work has fallen through the cracks: the growth in private provision may not have been a deliberate policy choice but it is a consequence of government inaction along with the options and funding available to local authorities. The report finds that certain large providers are seeing a profit margin of around 17% on fees from local authorities, which can amount to over £200 million a year in total. It looks at how the companies providing these services are increasingly being owned by private equity firms and raises questions about the way some large private providers are financed, with high levels of debt that could potentially create instability in future. It also shows how opaque the system has become, with detailed and complex investigation needed to understand the ownership, accountability, profits, costs, and prices of different providers – and the situation changing rapidly. As part of this research, the Children’s Commissioner’s Office spoke to children in care and care leavers about their experiences of the care they received from providers. Most were not concerned by who owned their care home, but they did care deeply about the care they receive and the people who give it. The report shows that differences in the quality of care – as measured by Ofsted ratings – between local authorities and large private providers are generally small, but smaller private providers are more likely to have worse Ofsted ratings than large private providers. At the same time, however, the majority of children’s homes are rated “Good” or “Outstanding”, regardless of whether they are run by local authorities or the private sector. The third report published today, “The 2020 Stability Index”, is the Children’s Commissioner’s fourth annual study of the instability that children in care experience. This year’s update shows that:
Following today’s reports, the Children’s Commissioner is making a number of recommendations to improve the provision of children’s social care in England, including that:
Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, said: “These reports focus on the children that Government has been ignoring and seemingly doesn’t know what to do with: those in the care system systemically let down because there isn’t a good, safe, welcoming home for them. “Only last month, a High Court judge wrote to me after an extremely vulnerable child in care could not get a suitable care home place anywhere in the country, even though the courts had found that their life was in danger. These shocking cases used to be rare but are now routine, and I am worried the whole system is becoming immune to the devastating effect this is having on children who may have previously been abused and neglected, or have serious mental or physical health needs. These children are being failed by the state. “The growing reliance on private providers, some of whom are making millions, is another symptom of a system failing to prioritise the needs of children. Both the government and councils have failed in their responsibilities by leaving it to the market. Many homes run by the private sector are excellent, but there are not enough of them, and they are not always in the right places. “There are many tireless staff who provide excellent care, and many children in care are happy and doing well. But over the last five years, I have seen the system left to slip deeper into crisis, seemingly unable to stop some of the most vulnerable children from falling through the gaps, and buckling under financial pressures. Nobody seems to have a grip, despite repeated warnings from myself, Parliament and the National Audit Office. “The Government needs a strategy to fix problems that it already knows exist. It must also launch the independent review into children’s social care promised in the Conservative manifesto.” Source: www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk The most vulnerable children are being "failed by the state" and a broken residential care system, the children's commissioner for England has said. Greater use of private provision has led to a fragmented, unco-ordinated and irrational system amid "significant profits", said Anne Longfield. The system has been allowed to slip deeper into crisis, she said. The government said an independent review of children's social care would begin "as soon as possible". Ms Longfield has published three reports detailing the plight of children the system "doesn't know what to do with". She said the government has failed to respond to previous warnings that thousands of these children are in danger of becoming victims of criminal and sexual exploitation. Older children were found to be living in "disgusting" conditions akin to a prison cell, one of the reports said. It described how one 17-year-old said her accommodation was filthy and smelly, with just one working shower - covered in mould - between 14 children and young adults. "Elsewhere children have told us they have not even been provided with the means to eat or sleep - things like duvet covers, plates or cutlery," the same report said.
All three reports highlight a shortage of children's home places, resulting in:
"Only last month, a High Court judge wrote to me after an extremely vulnerable child in care could not get a suitable care home place anywhere in the country, even though the courts had found their life was in danger," said Ms Longfield. "These shocking cases used to be rare but are now routine, and I am worried the whole system is becoming immune to the devastating effect this is having on children who may have previously been abused and neglected, or have serious mental or physical health needs." Profit and debt One of the reports analyses how, over the past decade, as demand for care has grown and local authority provision has failed to keep pace, private provision has expanded. The researchers found the majority of private provision was rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, although smaller providers were more likely to have lower ratings than either larger providers or local authorities. Some providers are owned by private equity companies and carry "significant amounts of debt" which could "risk their stability", says the report. "Both the government and councils have failed in their responsibilities by leaving it to the market," said Ms Longfield. "The growing reliance on private providers, some of whom are making millions, is another symptom of a system failing to prioritise the needs of children." Iryna Pona, policy manager at the Children's Society, said the reports were enormously worrying but not surprising. "The Children's Society is very concerned about how children in care are being failed by the very services who are supposed to be caring for and protecting them," she said. The Local Government Association, which represents councils across England, says it shares the commissioner's concerns about the risk of businesses running children's homes going bust as adult care provider Southern Cross did, almost a decade ago. "Providers should also not be making excessive profit from providing placements for children," said Judith Blake, who chairs the LGA's Children and Young People Board. A Department for Education statement said: "The education secretary has been clear that no child should be denied the opportunity for a loving, stable family life, or be bounced around the care system in accommodation that does not meet their needs. "We have also set out that children under the age of 16 should not be living in unregulated homes. "Our bold, broad and independently led care review will launch as soon as possible, and will support improvements in the children's social care system." Source: www.bbc.co.uk TACT welcomes today’s reports by the Children’s Commissioner including ‘Children who no one knows what to do with’, and ‘Private provision in children’s social care’. We fully recognize and endorse the Commissioner’s description of the current “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence” to the plight of vulnerable children in care, which we see manifesting itself in many ways. The “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence” also shows itself in the lack of priority to promote or help recruit foster carers by the DfE, whilst recruitment of adopters is well resourced. And there is also the Staying Put farrago, where deliberate under funding and cynical reliance on benefits, is poisoning an excellent and hard-won approach to enabling young people to remain with their foster carers when they turn 18. We see ambivalence in the lack of staying put for post 18’s in residential care and the empty promises of the care leaver covenant. Where the “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence” is most obvious is in the refusal of successive ministers and officials to engage properly and meaningfully with care experienced adults. This will be looked back on with regret in years to come and is an egregious oversight that denies us the opportunity to transform the system through co-designing it with those who have that invaluable lived experience. We also welcome the spotlight placed by the Children’s Commissioner on the growing use of private provision in the children’s care system, revealing a fragmented, uncoordinated system which allows companies with complex ownership structures to make significant profit from fostering vulnerable children. It is high time that the government banned the making of private profit from public care, it is corrosive, and adds nothing to the sector. Nothing better illustrates the “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence to the plight of vulnerable children in care” than the fact that Ministers are happy to see multi-millionaires further enrich themselves through the childhoods of vulnerable children. Source: www.tactcare.org.uk Location: Barnardo's Fostering & Adoption Wales Contract type: Permanent Hours: 18.5 Salary: £28,631 - £37,414 Closing Date: 9 November 2020 Interview Date: TBC An exciting opportunity has arisen for a qualified Social Worker to join our Family Placement service in Wales.
The successful candidate will join our Adoption and Fostering teams to recruit, train and assess prospective and approved Adopters and Foster Parents in North Wales. The post holder will also provide pre and post placement support to families, which could include further training for adopters and foster parents in order to meet the assessed needs of children. A Social Work qualification is essential for this role, as is post qualifying experience of direct work with children, young people and families within the field of adoption and fostering. When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification, Job Description and Additional Information document (if applicable). This should be done with an understanding of the context of the service described. Os hoffech wneud cais am y swydd hon yn Gymraeg, cysylltwch â'r Tîm Recriwtio os gwelwch yn dda. E-bost: recruitmentcentre@barnardos.org.uk If you wish to make an application for this role in Welsh, please contact the Recruitment Team. Email: recruitment.support@barnardos.org.uk About Barnardo's At Barnardo's we believe in children – no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through. Please read about our basis and values following the link below. You will be asked questions relating to them as part of the recruitment process for this role. Barnardo's is committed to having a diverse and inclusive workforce for staff and volunteers. We actively encourage applications from disabled, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic and male candidates as they are under-represented within Barnardo's. Our basis and values Full details and application documents here Circa: £43,000, plus on call allowance Department/Division: Scotland Location: Glasgow, Lanarkshire Contract Type: Permanent Part Time Hours: 18.5 hours per week Closing Date: 16 November 2020 Finding safe and loving homes for vulnerable children and young people.
The role Do you have the values we need? Do you want to be part of a Service that helps young people feel valued and important? … helps them grow and be stronger? … inspires and feel supported? CAPS Fostering Service is a specialist fostering service that offers attachment- based therapeutic care to young people who cannot be looked after at home. We offer the highest standard of care and provide our carers with excellent training, supervision and support to achieve the best outcomes for young people. As a Team Manager you will be working as part of our team (Fostering Scotland) . You will make a difference by:
You will need:
The way we work We work to make sure every child and young person has the love, support and opportunity they need to reach their potential. If you share the same vision, we want you to join our team. Have a look at our behaviours and values to understand more about the way we work here. Rewards We want our employees to feel valued and rewarded for the vital work they do. When you work with us, we'll recognise your efforts with generous annual leave, a comprehensive employer-matched pension scheme and a range of deals and discounts on our dedicated benefits portal. Find out more about our exclusive Action for Children benefits here. For safe and happy childhoods At Action for Children, we protect and support children and young people, providing practical and emotional care and support, ensuring their voices are heard, and campaigning to bring lasting improvements to their lives. Last year, we helped more than 387,000 children and families across the UK. For more information, please contact Anne Marie Wilson anne-marie.wilson@actionforchildren.org.uk Interviews will be held Monday 30th November We are committed to safer recruitment practices to protect our service users; therefore, all applicants are expected to have an understanding of and commitment to safeguarding best-practice. Action for Children is passionate about promoting equality, valuing diversity and working inclusively. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons particularly people with Disabilities and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants, as these groups are currently under-represented in our workforce. Full details and application documents here |
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