Intro in Safe Caring and Health and safety (Foster Care)

The course will consider the importance of creating a quality environment for children and young people who are placed in the care setting. Research indicates that moving into care is a critical time for individuals whilst recognising that they have already come from an emotionally challenging and complex environment. Participants will consider what is means to look after children in ways that keeps them free from harm and places their carers above suspicion from allegations of abuse. The course recognises the strengths of person centred planning and relationship building utilising the Social Pedagogic principles. In order to develop effective relationships a practitioner needs to understand behaviours which are expressed due to attachment issues and grief. Understanding why children behave the way they do always helps in effective engagement, allowing for appropriate and none judgemental intervention.

This course will use Social Pedagogic principles to consider care through the eyes of the child and understanding how mental wellbeing and attachment can impact on the child’s capacity to engage constructively. Foster carers and the foster care system is clearly vulnerable at many points. The success of foster care as a method of providing protection for children and young people deprived of, or denied, a natural family in which to develop, depends primarily and largely on the quality of the foster relationship. This course helps carers unpick what this means in an open environment which utilises Critical Reflection as a tool for exploring best outcomes.

Carers will be asked to consider how professional boundaries impact upon our thinking and how Social Pedagogy provides an appropriate framework to help foster carers consider this essential part of safer caring. Participants will also consider the concepts of risk and how this may be managed in a manner which promotes healthy development whilst ensuring unacceptable risk is addressed effectively. All support plans need to be considered utilising defensible practice and foster carers will consider what it means to be risk competent.

This course considers how we should all empower children and young people to help keep themselves safe, whether using information technology or when dealing with people face to face. Using guidance from the NSPCC, participants will consider how to support individuals for long term empowerment. Any effective plan needs to consider both external and internal factors which result in safer caring.

The course also considers what a safe environment means from the perspective of the carer and how concerns pertaining to complaints and allegations can affect ones thinking. Recognising stress and stress management is an essential part of ensuring both the carer and young person and managing any grievance can be a very stressful part of care, as well as an empowering process.

Practitioners need to consider how safer caring should be undertaken with children of various ages, identities and abilities underpinned by the principles of ‘Every Child Matters’. By the end of the course practitioners will have reflected on the policies, research and practice in order support young people in the most effective manner and be skilled and equipped to support young people and relevant others in the most effective way.

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