Assessment

[shaz298]

Hi Everyone and Happy New Year,

We are about to embark on the assessment process. Bit nervous but very excited.

Have been assured it should only take 4-6 months from our aplication being received which was a few weeks ago.

Any advice re assessment very much appreciated. xx

Hi

We recently completed ours and I enjoyed the whole process. Our lovely SW came every few weeks and we were given home work such as write all about yourself from birth to present. Also write about a significant relationship and list significant events throughout your life etc. What I did not realise is these would be presented to the panel as part of our application. So it might be worth checking if this is the case for you as it came as a bit of a surprise to me!

They ask lots of questions about how you deal with different situations. So could be an idea to think about times when you have dealt with challenging behaviour, diversity etc.

Hope it all goes well for you and pls feel free to ask any questions etc

Hiya. We were approved in August and the approval process from first phone call took 10 months (we are with our LA).

The only advice I can say is to be completely honest, there is no rush, and to think everything through very very carefully.

Enjoy the process... be prepared to change your opinions on things as you find out more, and make sure you have a good support network around you!!

Good luck with it all

Thanks to both of you. Supervising SW is coming tomorrow. So just a bitty nervous.
Good luck with your new careers. xx

Shaz - no need to be nerous - just be yourself and don't forget foster carers are like gold dust to social services (assume you are with LA)- have you done a prep course yet - the assessment doesn't usually start till after the course, though I know some of the independent fostering agencies do this.

You can ask the sw for a copy of the issues that will be covered in the assessment - there are no trick questions. The aim is to ensure that a child placed with you would be well cared for and kept safe. Most people say at the end of the a/ment that they actually enjoyed it. Don't forget this is a 2 way process - you need to think ery carefully whether fostering is going to be right for your family and the prep course and a/ment can be used for this purpose.

Good luck anyway.

Thanks Nana. We're going with Barnardos as the LA proved to be incompetent before we'd even begun. Having worked in residential child care and children's rights for many years previously and had lots of contact with La Sw depts. I took the incompetence at the 1st stage as an omen and decided to go with Barnardos.

Here's hoping he likes us!
xx

I can see why you went to Barnardoes and they wll be much more efficient as they hae much more time available to them that LA social workers.

The only thing I would caution is that you may have a much longer wait for a placement (though don't know what your offer is, if for an older child or a sibling group or a child with a disability) you may not have such a long wait. I am assuming you are wanting approval for adoption?

I don't know if you are aware of that fact that LAs first choice is to place children with their "own" prospective adoptors or permanent foster carers because this is the cheapest option - the next choice is an inter-agency placement (i.e. child placed with approved adoptor(s) from another LA and the last choice is a voluntary organisation like Barnardoes because this is the most expensive way of "buying" a family for a specific child and it does therefore tend to be the more difficult children/older/sib groups/disability etc that they have to "buy" from vol orgs.

I know it sounds mercenary talking about costs but I'm afraid that is the reality. I think it might be interesting to raise this with the assessor from Barnardoes and ask how many children (of the age range you are interested in) they have placed within the past 2 years or somesuch. The vol agencies are struggling at the moment because LAs just cannot afford the charging fee of the voluntaries, as they of course have to "sell" their families to the LA.

I am a little out of date as I retired from LA work 6 years ago but have done some a/ments for an independent agency and the couple had no idea how the system worked. I felt dutybound to tell them and as it happened this particular agency had been used quite extensively by the LA - this was a fostering application and if LAs are up against it and have no in-house carers free they have to use an IFA. The couple were happy to go ahead on that basis but the IFA was not happy with me for explaining the system to the applicants as I felt this was necessary in the interests of honesty and integrity.

I guess it differs from area to area but of course there are going to be more savage cuts for LAs in the future so I think it important that you have this discussion with the Barnardoes assessor. They will be keen to approve you as they need to "sell" you if you see what I mean.

Be interested to know how it goes.

Sorry I have just realised you are posting in the fostering section but the same applies really. The other thing that happens with fostering is that if the LA do place with a vol org, when an in-house plct becomes free, they will often move the child because of the costs.

I do wonder though whether your LA has some contract with Barnardoes - the one I did had a contract and used Barnardoes carers for short breaks for disabled children.

Might be worth asking if there is any sort of contract between Barnardoes and the LA

THanks Nana,

Yip very aware of the in-house used firt situation and realise that we may well have a wait before getting a placement.

We are only offering to care for children under 5 as out ittle boy is only 6. However due to his medical history we have a huge amount of experience in looking after a child with a disability and so have said that we would consider this although it is not necessary that a child has a disability for us to look after them. We are also prepared to look at short-term, permanent and maybe respite to begin with. So although our criteria is fairly restricted, we have opened it out as much as possible to fit our circumstances.

Thanks again for your input. SSW seeoms nice so hopefully the assessment will go ok.

Does anyone know anything about Adult Attachment Interviews and what to expect??

Thanks

Sharon xx

Just to add to what NanaNina already posted - I foster for my LA and they've now started bringing children back from agency placements whenever possible due to the imposed cuts. It's awful as some of those placements had been running successfully for some time, but not entirely unexpected.