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Annex C
Some key principles in working with kinship carers through the assessment process-
- Family Meetings
Family Meetings should be an integral part of the process of placing a child with kinship carers. Family meetings should bring together different parts of the child's family to consider how they can work together to provide safe and nurturing care for the child. This should apply in cases where children are not formally Looked After as well as in cases where they have become Looked After children. They should be seen as a helpful process that recognises the family's strengths and child care abilities and identifies where supports need to be put in place and by whom those supports should be provided.
The outcomes of family meetings should be included in the assessment process and decision-making.
- Financial Advice
Sound financial advice is essential for kinship carers and workers must advise them to seek independent legal and financial advice from the CAB Specialist Advice project to ensure that they are aware of the impact on their current benefits and other entitlements if they start to receive allowances for the Looked After child from the Local authority. These are complex areas of benefit and expert advice is essential for carers and staff from Local authorities.
- Using the child's plan - meeting the child's needs
As part of the development of the child's plan, it is of great importance to support the kinship carer to consider what is involved in providing that care and to help prepare them for their tasks as kinship carers. The process should offer the opportunity to discuss the realities of caring for the child and what supports they will need. While the child's needs for safety and nurture are paramount, the assessment should allow families to be in control of the solutions and invite them to think about the support they need to make sure they can provide for a child's well being. It is a supportive process, not investigative. Nevertheless, there should be clarity from the outset about the standards expected by the professionals in relation to a child's well being, especially their safety and nurture. As the child is being Looked After by a Local authority, the assessment process establishes that the local authority has a responsibility to ensure that the placement is in the child's best interests and that the carers can contribute to the child's safety and well being. It is important that the different stages in the process are shared and understood.
- Involving the child's parents
Working with the child's parents and the child care team will be central to the discussions and how the kinship carer will cope with putting their child's children at the centre of their lives rather than their own adult child (given the majority of kinship carers are Grandparents).
- Kinship care approval and foster care approval
The approval process is not identical to that for foster carers because it is looking at whether and how the kinship carers can ensure the well-being of the individual kinship care child, not at whether the carers can meet the standards required to look after children unknown to them and their family.
What kind of assessment is suitable for kinship carers?
Because of the unique nature of kinship care, the Task Group considered that the assessment of kinship carers was in many ways closer to an assessment for family support than to a foster care assessment. The work with the carers should identify what services and supports the carers need to care for the child rather than an assessment of their key competencies, which is the approach taken in foster care.
Authorities placing a child who is Looked After with kinship carers must satisfy themselves through a robust process that the kinship carers can provide adequate and safe care for the child placed with the kinship carers but they should take a GIRFEC approach to this assessment - that is one that identifies the strengths and pressures on the kinship family, weighs these, and works to identify where supports are needed to make sure the child will be healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected and responsible and included and above all, safe. The assessment should be seen as a protection for the child and for the kinship carers.
Therefore, although any assessment should be proportionate to a child's needs, the process should focus on:
- Gathering information with the carers about the strengths and pressures in their life
- Ensuring carers have full information on practical matters of finance, legal issues and benefits
- Exploring with them the major changes that caring for the child will bring to their own family relationships
- Identifying work to be done with the child's parents and, if necessary, drawing up a plan of support for carers to help in managing agreed contact patterns that support children's well-being
- Looking with the carers at how they will provide a protective environment for children and what help they will need to do this. This will include honesty about any issues of safety, including a bottom line for action if the placement is not safe
- Considering the impact on their own children if they are still in the family home (includes talking to carers' own children, grandchildren and the extended family)
- Developing the child's plan - involving birth parents and family and professionals
- Assessing in partnership with the carers what they can do to meet the needs of the child which have been identified in the child's plan and
- Agreeing what supports and services the child and carer need to make kinship care positive for the child.
Planning for the future - ongoing work with the child
As with all Looked After children, the aim is to provide a stable and permanent home environment. The ongoing work with the child and kinship carers should focus on identifying the route out of formal Looked After status for the child as well as the longer-term intentions of the kinship carer. This includes adoption, a permanence order or a residence order.
As the weeks go by, the carers' worker will be making a cumulative assessment of the skills and capacity of the kinship carers to look after this child. They will require to analyse the information they have gathered and to present that clearly in their reports. The child's worker will be making an assessment of child's needs following the placement with kinship carers or building on one that is already in place.
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