Supervision, Support and Training of Staff and Foster Carers
Scope of this chapter
This chapter applies to all staff and approved foster carers and explains the way in which the Community Foster Care provides supervision and support.
Regulations and Standards
The Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011
Regulation 17 - Support, training, and information for foster parents
Fostering Services National Minimum Standards:
Standard 21 - Supervision and Support of Foster Carers
Related guidance
Amendment
This chapter was reviewed and refreshed locally in November 2024.
Community Foster Care is committed to ensuring staff and carers receive effective supervision. Supervision supports the development of a positive culture in the Community Foster Care and provides a focus on continuous improvement and consistent practice which helps to improve outcomes for vulnerable children, young people, and their families.
The Community Foster Care will ensure:
- Each member of staff and each carer has an induction;
- All staff and foster carers receive regular supervision and informal support as required.
Working Together to Safeguard Children (HM Government, 2018) stated:
'Effective practitioner supervision can play a critical role in ensuring a clear focus on a child's welfare. Supervision should support practitioners to reflect critically on the impact of their decisions on the child and their family'. Supervision is a formal process in which the workload and performance of each individual is evaluated and reviewed so that where necessary learning and development can take place.
All staff and carers will receive regular formal supervision, normally by their Line Manager or Supervising Social Worker to enable them to:
- Be clear about their role, responsibilities, and accountabilities;
- Consider and analyse how their interventions impact on the child / children;
- Consider and analyse how the child / children impact on them;
- Understand and achieve their individual aims and objectives and those of Community Foster Care;
- Be supported in maximising their potential;
- Be clear about communication methods which allow for constructive two-way feedback.
Formal supervision does not replace the informal supervision that takes place on a more regular basis as required.
Supervision is a private but not a confidential process. This means that the records are the property of Community Foster Care, not the individual. Where there is an explicit issue that needs to remain confidential, this must be agreed between supervisor and supervisee.
Supervision is not a forum for dealing with disciplinary matters, although concerns about work, personal competence or conduct will be raised in supervision. Where it is anticipated that a more formal process is needed, the matter should be dealt with outside supervision and via the appropriate procedures.
Any areas of disagreement between the supervisor and supervisee will be recorded on the supervision records. Areas of disagreement that cannot be resolved may be referred to the Registered / Service Manager.
It is recognised that, in addition to individual supervision sessions, there are other ways in which staff and foster carers discuss and seek advice. This could be through peer mentoring or in a group setting. These are valuable and helpful ways in which staff and foster carers can broaden their knowledge and expertise, however, they must never be a substitute for formal individual supervision sessions.
The child's allocated social worker should be contacted for specific advice or support in relation to the child and their Care and Placement Plans.
A supervision agreement will be completed between the supervisor and supervisee.
This will include:
- Frequency;
- Duration (at least 1 hour) and location of sessions (ensure privacy);
- Record keeping (i.e. record of supervision to be made and signed by supervisor and supervisee and accessible to both);
- Confidentiality and disagreements.
The agenda for each meeting should be agreed before or at the start of the meeting. Previous actions from the previous meeting should be reviewed. For Foster Carers, supervision is essentially a supportive and enabling two way process to:
- Ensure the foster carers understand how they contribute safeguarding promoting the welfare of children in their care;
- Enable foster carers to contribute effectively to the plans for the children for whom they are caring;
- Provide appropriate monitoring and feedback on the foster carer's work to ensure the Training, Support and Development Standards for Foster Carers are fully met;
- Complete personal development plans for each carer, which are linked to their training and their annual review;
- Support foster carers by providing advice and guidance, or making this available from elsewhere as appropriate;
- Give foster carers an opportunity to raise any problems and make sure they are addressed appropriately;
- Acknowledge the challenges and demands that the fostering tasks make on foster families and ensure appropriate support is available;
- Enable a safe space for critical reflection;
- Recognise and address any difficulties the foster carer's own children may be experiencing arising from fostering; and
- Assist foster carers to work in an anti discriminatory way that respects and promotes individual differences;
- Reflect on the emotional impact that the children have on the carer, to better understand the children's experiences and needs. This will support the Foster Carer not to be organised by unconscious processes and dynamics in the caring relationship.
A record of all meetings should be recorded on a pro forma Supervision Record and will be kept on the Foster Carer's file with a copy given to the Foster Carers.
The supervision records will inform the Foster Carer's review - see Review and Termination of Approval of Foster Carers Procedure.
Frequency of supervision meetings will be agreed between the Foster Carer and the Supervising Social Worker and should take place as appears necessary in the interests of the children placed with them, but will be at least monthly for staff and active Foster Carers.
Additional supervision of carers will take place as required.
An out of hours service is available to Foster Carers. At all times, day, or night a Social Worker is available by phone on 01452 849301. The Social Worker on duty, will also be supported by a manager.
Location: Supervision should take place in a mutually agreed location at an agreed time, free from distractions. This may be via video conference.
Recording: Supervision notes must be recorded and agreed within 1 week of the supervision. Any discussions of decisions relating to a family or child must be recorded in the child's Charms record using the appropriate supervision related progress item.
Audits: Managers are expected to support practice by auditing staff and carers' supervision practice on an annual basis.
This section is relevant to all operational staff and Foster Carers working directly with children and young people and their immediate line managers up to and including the Senior Leadership Team. However, the approach can provide useful guidance for business support staff where supervision is also critical.
Supervision develops our expertise and excellence in working with children, young people, and families. It is essential that all supervision at Community Foster Care is child centred. Ensuring that all supervisions are child focused promotes a culture of learning which results in the organisation knowing its services and adjusting to facilitate its practice of effectiveness and improve outcomes for children.
For children who present with complex, multiple needs and risky behaviours, but who tend to struggle to engage with helping professionals, endeavouring to understand what lies behind their behaviours is fundamental to provide good quality foster care. Supervision should promote this approach by engaging with the carer's thoughts and feelings about the child and the caring relationship. This source of information in turn gives clues to the child's experiences.
Community Foster Care's Vision, Mission and Values should provide the foundations to high quality supervision within Community Foster Care. Supervisors of practice must keep abreast of research and evidence-based approaches to inform best practice and ensure that these are brought into the supervision discussion.
In addition to developing practice through learning about new methods and research, Community Foster Care believes in promoting creativity through the safe exploration of new approaches and innovation. Community Foster Care believes that we should consider ourselves explorers and not experts and as such we remain open minded to new stimulus and information and have a continuous dialogue about how problems can be solved.
Supervision should:
- Discuss and record whether our intervention(s) are making a positive difference for the children concerned;
- Support staff and Foster Carers to foster the intuitive and analytical reasoning skills that are key to reflective practice;
- Ensure that effective planning is taking place for the child based on their needs and desired outcomes and that the supervision records contain evidence of this;
- Promote safe practice through accountability for actions that staff and Foster Carers take to improve outcomes for children and make them safer.
Supervision must always consider matters from the perspective of the child and ask:
- 'What are the child's needs?';
- 'What difference are we making to the child's life?'; and
- 'Is the child safe?'.
Community Foster Care endeavours to create a culture and environment which, through the provision of support and communication, leads to psychological safety. In turn, we intend for this to enable openness, reflection, and challenge. Critical challenge by peers and the supervisor is fundamental to promoting an ongoing culture of critical reflection. This will support staff to identify gut feelings and intuition and correct them or use them to the child's advantage – a culture that promotes critical reflection in all forums is essential.
Reflective supervision is about considering the experience and learning from it. It is about drawing out intuition, gut feelings, previous experiences and knowledge. The emotional dimension of working with children and families plays a significant part in how workers reason and act. It is providing a wealth of information that can give clues to the child's experiences, feelings, and thoughts. A supervisory relationship that encourages the exploration of this, enabling discussion and for it to be addressed. It will support the strengthening of Foster Carers' relationships with children. It will protect against the unconscious influence and on where attention is focused and how information is interpreted. This can be harmful and can lead to distortions in workers' reasoning. Here are a couple of examples:
- A Supervising Social Worker of a Foster Carer can identify with and feel sympathy for the Foster Carer to the extent that he or she fails to see that the child is not being appropriately cared for;
- A Foster Carer who feels frustrated with a child may in fact be experiencing the child's sense of frustration and helplessness about the things that have happened to them.
Supervision must also consider the impact on the Foster Carer or Staff Member. Being exposed to the powerful and often negative emotions found in working with vulnerable children and children at risk can come at a personal cost. If the work environment does not help Support Workers and debrief them after particularly traumatic experience then it increases the risk of burnout which, in the human services, has been defined in terms of three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation (or cynicism), and reduced personal accomplishment. (Eileen Munro 2011).
It is everybody's responsibility to ensure we are monitoring and supporting staff and carers' health and wellbeing and ensuring that Community Foster Care has the right support in place to address any issues.
Critical appraisal of the assessment and planning for a child and family should be central to good practice in developing our work. This should be part of the culture of the service and seen as not a personal attack but an outsider helping to highlight any blind spots or offering a new perspective on the problem. Supervision is one context in which this can happen: it should not be limited to this but something that colleagues or fellow professionals are able to do.
Any child protection concerns that arise out of a supervision meeting must be followed up in line with the relevant Local Safeguarding Children's Partnership procedure. This activity should be recorded in the supervision notes placed in the child's file and a copy of the referral should be included in the child's Charms file.
If staff work directly with children on a one to one basis or have keyworking or casework responsibilities, they should receive one to one supervision which discusses each child individually. If staff work with a group of children as part of a team then they can receive group or team supervision which ensures recording of the discussion around each child.
Supervision should assist staff to develop critical thinking and analysis skills, explore their own learning and development needs and identify opportunities to address those needs. It will allow staff and managers to assess skills and knowledge and identifying any gaps and/or learning and development needs. The supervision can be used to help staff to identify their preferred learning styles and barriers to learning. This is also an opportunity to support staff to reflect on their learning opportunities and ensuring that they know how to apply the learning in practice.
There should be an unannounced visit at least twice a year. The main purpose of the unannounced visit will be to look at the home environment that a child is living in.
The unannounced visit will check:
- Who is in the home;
- Who is caring for the child;
- If the carer is not at home, what arrangements have been made for the care of the child;
- The environment of the house.
If the Foster Carers are not at home, the Supervising Social Worker should leave a note for the Foster Carers to say that they have visited.
If the child is present and being cared for by someone else, the Social Worker should check the identity of that person but should not continue with the visit. The Supervising Social Worker should in all cases seek to see the child privately to ascertain directly from them that they do not have any concerns.
Unannounced visits should be recorded.
There should not ordinarily be a regular programme of unannounced visits without reason - for example if a Foster Carer is being closely monitored. In such an event the reason for such will be explained to the Foster Carer.
For the detailed procedure, see Managing Allegations Against Staff and Foster Carers Procedure and also 'Breaches of Standards in Foster Care Policy'.
Where allegations are made against the foster carer(s), the Supervising Social Worker should:
- Support the family;
- Discuss, with the Foster Carer and their family, the issues that have led to the allegation as agreed at the Strategy Meeting;
- Make the Foster Carers aware of the process and of their rights during any investigation;
- Make the Foster Carer's aware of their own possible conflict of interests and inform them of where they can seek alternative support and advice, for example from the Fostering Network or other independent sources.
The foster carer(s) should be fully aware of the Notification of Significant Events and the need to immediately report to their Supervising Social Worker or Fostering Agency the following:
- The death of a child;
- A Serious illness or serious accident of a child placed with them;
- The outbreak at the foster home of any infectious disease (which in the opinion of a general practitioner attending the home is sufficiently serious to be notified);
- An allegation that a child placed with foster parents has committed a serious offence;
- Concerns about the sexual exploitation of any child placed with them;
- The Police being called to the foster carer's home as a result of a serious incident relating to a child placed there;
- A child placed with the foster carer(s) who has gone missing;
- Any serious concerns about the emotional or mental health of a child, such that a mental health assessment would be requested under the Mental Health Act 1983.
Supervising Social Workers should ensure the following tasks are done:
- Ensure that all new carers complete the Foster Carer Training Support and Development Standards by their first annual review;
- Give a copy of the Foster Carers' Handbook to the new carer;
- Give the Foster Care Agreement to the carer: 2 copies to be signed and one returned and placed on the carer's file;
- Support carers with any specialist issues for disabled children for e.g. support in completing applications, Disability Living Allowance etc.
- Complete risk assessments surrounding bedroom sharing (each child over 3 has their own bedroom or, where this is not possible, the sharing of the bedroom must have been agreed by the Placing Authority), mixing with other children in home, etc.
- Discuss and check equipment (especially in the child's bedroom) and ensure it is appropriate to the age of the child to be placed;
- Take part in discussions about potential placements;
- Take part in planning meetings regarding placements;
- Ensure that the child's social worker give the foster family full information about children about to be placed, including a history of any abuse or neglect and the reason for the placement, the child's educational, medical, religious, racial, linguistic and cultural needs and if they have gone missing previously;
- Discuss issues relevant to contact with birth parents and other family members;
- Discuss how the child's health needs are promoted and how children should be encouraged to adopt a healthy lifestyle;
- Assist carers in dealing with relevant services such as health, education or specialist services is appropriate, particularly if the placement is an out-of-area one and such services need to be transferred to meet the child's needs;
- Discuss appropriate training to when providing care for children with complex health needs;
- Assist carer with training needs for appropriate safer care practice, including skills to care for children who have been abused. For foster carers who offer placements to disabled children, this includes training specifically on issues affecting disabled children;
- Discuss financial issues with the carer: allowances, pocket money, leisure activities, toiletries and travelling;
- Enquire about holiday plans the carers have made, and if the child is able to join them? If not the child's social worker must be informed so alternative arrangements can be made;
- Share names and contact numbers for identified relevant members of the family, and also the local authority out- of- hours support, school; health and other relevant staff/agencies who might be involved;
- Ensure that arrangements are made for the provision of specialist equipment for disabled children;
- Set date of first visit after the placement;
- Let the social worker for a child already in placement know when another child is to be placed.
- Where necessary, check and follow up on all issues raised during the placement planning. Discuss any areas of concern with foster carers and ensure appropriate support/advice is provided straight away rather than the carer having to wait for reviews;
- Provide foster carers with breaks from caring as appropriate, which must meet the needs of placed children;
- Take part in any Strategy Meetings and Section 47 Enquiry relating to the foster family. Be involved in interviews/support as agreed;
- Ensure the Supervising Social Worker and the foster carers receive invitations to the child's Looked After Reviews and Child Protection Conferences, and attend when appropriate;
- Prepare for and attend foster carer review meetings (see Review and Termination of Approval of Foster Carers Procedure);
- Ensure the training programme is updated and accessed by carers and their family and children;
- Visit regularly in accordance with the foster carer's needs, the child's Care Plan and as required - see Section 3, The Practicalities of Supervision (including Out of Hours) and Section 5, Unannounced Visits for Foster Carers;
- Review the safer caring plan and any changes in household circumstances;
- Assess and review any health and safety issues within the fostering household including the addition of any new pets and the environment in which they are kept;
- Make unannounced visits as required - see Section 5, Unannounced Visits for Foster Carers;
- Update Disclosure and Barring Service checks on members of the family every 3 years, including those reaching 18, and other persons who come to live at the home, who are 18 or over;
- Whilst there is no statutory time interval, as good practice medical information should also be updated at least every 3 years by writing to the foster carer's GP. In the event of any serious concerns about the foster carers health, a review of the foster carers approval should be carried out immediately;
- Record all contacts with carers;
- Provide reports for Panel as required under the relevant procedures;
- Where appropriate contribute to Court Reports as agreed with child's social worker;
- Discuss how the carers can support young people into adulthood.
- Support the family as much as possible in what can be a very difficult time;
- Discuss fully with the carer and their family all the issues that have led to any unplanned end of placements and identify any learning/training opportunities;
- Assist the Foster Carer to complete their end of placement report and support the end of placement review process if required;
- Attend Disruption Meetings as required.
Last Updated: November 11, 2024
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