Keeping The Promise in Fostering and Adoption
Towards the end of 2022 we were delighted to work with Promise Implementation Lead, Heather Irving, dedicating two days to consider how we demonstrate the outworking of The Promise across Fostering, Adoption, Kinship Care, Supported Care and our Children’s Houses.
Many ideas were generated; however, two key themes emerged…
Hearing the voices of those who experience care…
We considered our use of language in forms and what questions we should be asking children and young people about their experiences of care.
It was agreed that we could be doing this in more varied and child-friendly ways at important points, such as during their foster carer’s reviews.
Thinking about how we write about our children and young people…
In our children’s houses we recognised that, whilst keeping written records on our children and young people is a legal requirement, sometimes the methods we use are not fully centred on the child.
We reflected that most of us have family members who can fill in the blanks for us when we can’t quite remember all the details of a particular life event.
As a service we are now moving towards keeping records for each young person that will help them understand their whole life experience, both now and in the future, rather than solely focusing on facts which may be upsetting for them. Instead, we want to help our young people remember what positive things were also going on in their lives when upsetting events occurred, including the people who were there for them, who they felt closest to and how much they were cared about.
