Fostering support and Fostering Support Meetings

1. Guiding Principles

The primary objective of all staff working with a child looked after (CLA), including health partners, school and education professionals (where applicable) is to ensure that the child is appropriately placed and supported in order to maximise stability and develop strong attachments lasting into adult life;
Placement stability is critical to the emotional wellbeing and overall outcomes of children who are in our care. Educational progress will be impaired for CLA with multiple moves and exclusion from education is often a key factor in placement instability;
Regardless of placement type, as corporate parents we must do everything possible to work together to ensure placement stability and minimise the risk of multiple moves for a child;
There are often warning signs before a placement reaches the point at which a breakdown may occur. Consideration of Fostering support needs to start before a child is placed and needs to be subject to regular reviews;
Building a positive working relationship between foster carers, supervising social workers, children’s social workers and other key professionals is key in providing ongoing support to foster families;
Fostering support meetings should be held at the earliest convenience and before a crisis occurs, by bringing together the foster carer and relevant professionals involved to identify the right support for child and carers;
Fostering support meetings can also be held on a regular basis to provide on-going wrap around support when necessary;
The Placement Planning Meeting with delegated authority, must be held at the outset of the placement and consider the support needs of the foster carer. These needs should be recorded as part of the placement planning meeting. This can be subsequently reviewed through a Placement Support Meeting.

2. Information about the child to be provided to Foster carers

Foster carers should always be provided with the child’s placement referral form (PRF) before a decision is made about a match between a child and foster carers. The PRF is sent to foster carers by the Fostering Service;
Once a decision is made about a match, the foster carer should be provided with as much information about the child as possible and information to be shared verbally with the child’s social worker and/or previous foster carer. This also applies for when a child is placed in an emergency;
The Fostering Service is in the process of trialling early Trauma trackers for children when they first move into a foster home. The Trauma tracker collates all the historic information about the child and puts it into one document, so that foster carers are supported to understand that any emerging behaviours can be seen in the context of the known history of the child. The trauma tracker becomes an essential tool for promoting stability by enabling the foster carer and team around the child to get a better understanding of the child’s presenting behaviours and support the carers to develop appropriate strategies in supporting the child. The trauma tracker is reviewed in foster carers supervision and in meetings with the child’s social worker.

3. Information about the foster family to be provided to the child

Once a match has been identified, the child’s social worker should be providing the child with the child friendly family profile which provides the child with information about the foster home, including photographs of the family, the home, any pets etc.;
In addition to this, it is good practice for the foster carers to provide a video recording with a welcome message to the child via the child’s social worker (ie via Whatsapp).

4. Transition planning

For a planned move for a child from one foster family to another, a transition planning meeting should be held to include existing and new foster carers, Child’s social worker and the new Fostering team manager and supervising social worker. The transition plan should include introduction visits, visits to the new foster home, contact arrangements following transition etc.;
In Hertfordshire, we use the Hertfordshire transition model for transitions for children to adopers and foster carers. Please see chapter 6. Transition process in the Long term fostering procedures for more information

5. Initial support plan

A placement planning meeting will be held within 5 days of a child moving to a new placement where the Placement Plan will be drawn up by the Child’s social worker. Please refer to full Placement Planning Procedures;

See also: Placement Disruption and Disruption Meetings Procedure;
As part of placement planning, the Initial Fostering support plan is completed by the supervising social worker (SSW) at or following the placement planning meeting. The initial support plan identifies what support the child and carers need from the outset of the placement.
This support can include any support needed for both carers and the fostering family:

For the child this may include additional activities, Mockingbird support if child is part of a hub, therapeutic support, sleepover support if this is part of the child’s care plan, educational support etc.
For the foster carers this may include additional training needed to meet the needs of the child, buddy support, Mockingbird support, ARC fostering support etc.
See Foster Carer Support Offer for a full list of support available to inhouse foster carers;

Foster Carer Support Offer December 2022 (hertfordshire.gov.uk)
The Fostering support plan is then reviewed as part of every Foster carer supervision, CLA review and updated as required.

6. Fostering Support Meetings

The Fostering Support Meeting (previously PSM) has a key role to play in ensuring that necessary support and resources are identified and explored in order to develop creative responses/ intervention to maintain placement stability;
The purpose of a Fostering support meeting is to meet as a team around the child to consider what is going on for the child and carers and to discuss what support can be put in place to support the foster family. It is important that the network around the child considers the child’s trauma history and experiences when discussing the child’s presenting behaviours and what support is needed;
If there are any specific practice concerns to be addressed, these concerns will need to be addressed separately with the carer and only with relevant professionals, ie the fostering team and/or the child’s social worker;
Fostering support may come from a range of services and be provided directly to the child, the carers or both;
Any urgent support needed for a child or carer can be agreed outside of Fostering support meetings/process, either via the fostering team manager or PARP (Practice and Resource panel).

7. Convening a Fostering Support meeting

A Fostering support meeting can be requested by foster carers, the Fostering Service or child’s social worker at any point during the time the child’s lives in a foster family and ideally before things are coming to a crisis point;
A Fostering Support Meeting should be arranged by the SSW (or the child’s social worker if child is living with Independent fostering carers).

8. Attendees

For an in-house fostering arrangement, the Fostering support meeting is usually chaired by a Fostering manager, however depending on need and situation, a CLA manager/CSW or Supervising social worker/Child’s social worker can also chair this meeting;
The key people in a Fostering support meeting are the foster carer(s), child if appropriate depending on age/issues to be discussed, child’s social worker and SSW;
Depending on the situation, the fostering manager, team manager of the child’s social worker and IRO should attend;
It is important to have a flexible approach to who should be attending Fostering support meetings, to ensure the meeting is purposeful and takes place without delay;
Consideration to invite children and young people should always be made. Any decision not to invite a child to a PSM must be a shared professional decision and the reason for not doing so must be carefully recorded. If the child/ young person does not attend the meeting, then the child’s social worker should obtain the child’s views in advance and should ensure that they are considered and recorded at the meeting;
The SSW should ensure that the IRO is invited to and informed about the meeting. If the IRO is unable to attend, the SSW should ensure that their views are sought in advance and are considered and recorded during the meeting. Other professionals, from health and education can also be invited to contribute to the support plan as required;
When a child/ young person is placed in an IFA the Social Work Team Manager arranges the Fostering support meeting and the Social Work Team Manager is responsible for chairing and minuting the meetings;
When there is an imminent risk of placement breakdown, immediate support will need to be considered (ie via additional home visits and telephone consultations) and a Fostering support meeting should be held within 2 working days of a request. The urgency should always be dictated by how fragile the situation is;
It is good practice to review the Fostering support plan on a regular basis with the foster carers, child’s social worker and supervising social worker (ie every 3 months) and holding regular, more informal Fostering support meetings is helpful in building and maintaining relationships and providing ongoing support to the child and foster carers.

9. Placement support plan minutes

The SSW is responsible for minute taking and should use the Fostering support meeting template on LCS. This is located under forms on the child’s record. After completion on the child’s file it will automatically be saved to the relevant carers file. IRO’s will automatically receive a case note alert;
Foster carers and attendees of the meeting should be sent a copy of the Fostering support minutes electronically within 5 days of meeting taking place.

10. Outcomes of a Fostering Support Meeting

The outcome of the meeting is to establish a clear and effective Fostering Support Plan, which offers targeted support. This should be regularly monitored and subject to review at subsequent Fostering support meetings and CLA reviews;
Service Managers (Fostering, Family Safeguarding, and CLA as applicable) will be made aware of stability issues for a child to ensure that they have awareness of cases of instability that may require further intervention;
All professionals identified in the support plan will be responsible for agreed actions. The SSW should monitor actions agreed and escalate outstanding matters to the fostering team manager and Fostering Service Manager as required. In most circumstances, a date will be set where the Fostering Support Plan is reviewed. The Fostering Service Manager will escalate actions to SM colleagues if delays are contributing to placement vulnerabilities;
Any support that requires significant extra resources will need to be approved by PARP.