Hertfordshire County Council. Kinship Care Service Development. January 2008.
FOCUS GROUP FEEDBACK.
1. What does the team need to do?

Assess potential carers, with the capacity and skills to ‘fast-track’
assessments when there are proceedings

Present carers to panel where children are looked after and carers need to be
approved.

Support /monitor/ review carers where appropriate and /or required

The Public Law Outlines, and the anticipated increase in costs of proceedings
in public law, are likely to mean that more ‘kinship’ or relative arrangements
will be explored before proceedings are instituted.
2. Will this be a case holding team?

It will complete assessments, including viability assessments.

There will be stable on-going arrangements, where children are not looked
after, where this team could be case holding.

Could take on Private Fostering Assessments and monitoring?

Could complete Residence Order reviews?

SGOs are currently held in Adoption Support---if Kinship Team has support
function, could they transfer also?

Consistency and clarity of remit needed.
3. What tools/models are there?

Tools are either BAAF/Fostering Network forms or Assessment Framework –
both have shortcomings and do not seem ‘fit’ for this particular assessment
task.

There is no consistency across the county about what forms and formats are
to be sued for different ‘kinship’ circumstances.

No model for viability assessment, and no consistency about who should be
completing viability assessments.

FGCs, or a similar family meeting could be mechanism by which resources in
the family can be identified, including early consideration of potential
alternative carers when it appears that parents need additional support to
care fro their children and /or it appears that the child may need to be cared
for by someone other than his/her parents.

Some authorities are further down the track with kinship care and could offer
‘what works’ examples.
4. Are there any disadvantages?

Do we need to create another specialism within Children’s Social Care?
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Hertfordshire County Council. Kinship Care Service Development. January 2008.

Would it be better to develop skills and share these across Locality teams or
Fostering Teams, or both?
5. What is the role of the panel?

We may need a newly constituted panel as the functions are different from
‘stranger’ fostering in many cases—need different experience/skills in panel
members

Some carers will be ‘approved’ as family and friends foster carers, but the
assessment, fostering task and thresholds for recommendation are different

Longer term arrangements for Residence Order or Special Guardianship
need scrutiny, and scrutiny of the support being suggested to help sustain the
arrangement.

Panel needs to take flexible approach to different arrangements, promote
‘what works’ and ideally be able to meet at short notice to respond to need
rather than being set and operational staff required to meet panel dates.
6. The context for the work of the team:

There is a range of ‘arrangements’ which could be included (those supported
by section 17, ROs , SGOs as well as kinship foster carers and private
fostering)

Similarly there is a range of levels of information known at the outset—and
decisions are made/have to be made sometimes when the information is
scarce.

Empowering families to find and sustain their solutions will require cultural
shift—the family will be the experts and many of the arrangements may predate CSF involvement:

Can we have a range of responses to different circumstances—but maintain
safety?

W e need to integrate development of FGCs and PLO with development of
kinship care
7. What will facilitate development?

Whole service ‘buy in’.

Ownership at highest management levels.

Clear procedures and consistent practice

Cross-county information-dissemination and related learning opportunities

Clear time-table for implementation/roll out
8. If the team has a ‘support’ function, what should that include?

Sign-posting and advocacy to other universal and targeted services
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Hertfordshire County Council. Kinship Care Service Development. January 2008.

Opportunities to attend groups, develop networks, contact helpful
organisations

Link-worker identified

Financial help

Respite arrangements

Learning opportunities, access to formal training

Advocacy/support to access services to assist the child (therapeutic
interventions)

Reviews of the arrangements.

A contact point to try and avoid crises.

Help for the parents of the child.
Strong message that services/support should be needs based, and should not depend on
legal status of the arrangement, but that “not everyone will get everything”
Any financial support should be equitable, transparent and not offer incentives or perverse
incentive to favour one legal option over another.
9. Next Steps

Identify a representative ‘standing group’ of policy and operational
staff/managers to continue development discussions

Agree language (kinship care, relative care, family and friends etc)

Have communication strategy to provide information to all stakeholders,
(workers, families)

Provide information

Recruit team manager

Develop/ implement assessment tools that are fit for purpose and reflect good
practice

Develop procedures—who does what, business planning

Agree support levels/ financial arrangements
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