policy
Children need a strong adult relationship
29/10/2009 00:13
‘We should also, however, recognise that some adults fail to raise their children properly, fail to care for them, and fail to socialise them.’
So, a voice of reason. Chris Gardiner is the CEO of the Police and Community Youth Clubs. He posted a great article on The Punch today about kids at risk. That quote is from his article.
He argues that we should be investing in our youth in trouble, because while ‘re-socialising dysfunctional, delinquent kids is relationship and resource intensive, … it is cheaper and more effective in the long run than detention centres and prisons. For example, it costs $11 per day for youth conferencing, and $556 per day for custody.’
(And just to explain why this is an issue, he notes that NSW has several times the number of kids in detention that Victoria has, and that over half the kids locked up are aboriginal.)
It’s the same message we hear from the ‘children at risk’ support system. Get into the family, support them, stop the family structure breaking down. Fix it, rather than manage the fallout.
So why does Gardiner’s article sound more realistic to us?
He puts the child at the centre of it.
After that early statement about the family, he talks about the child, and what they need. Let’s be blunt - he doesn’t talk about propping up a failing family structure. He advocates action with the child, and for the child. He says we need to give these children ‘the chance for social development that they have been thus far denied’.
There is no reason why support for the family shouldn’t continue. But it should be separate to support allocated to the child.
And here’s the paragraph that could well be written for children in care.
‘For intervention to work, though, it must be built on an intense engagement around a single, consistent and strong adult relationship and an alternative peer setting. Kids need an adult committed to them, and not a committee of social workers and public servants (as interagency case management often becomes).’
This issue of attachment came up in an American Academy of Paediatrics article on Developmental Issues for Young Children in Foster Care , and we wrote about it previously on our blog. Here’s the relevant paragraph from the Academy article:
‘Having at least 1 adult who is devoted to and loves a child unconditionally, who is prepared to accept and value that child for a long time, is key to helping a child overcome the stress and trauma of abuse and neglect.’
So we think those two paragraphs might contain some guidance for assessing whether a child at risk is getting what they need:
Those of us lucky enough to grow up in a nurturing family will read those points and understand what they mean. We know what that looks and feels like.
So, how long should we take to decide a child is NOT getting that, and what are we prepared to do about it?
So, a voice of reason. Chris Gardiner is the CEO of the Police and Community Youth Clubs. He posted a great article on The Punch today about kids at risk. That quote is from his article.
He argues that we should be investing in our youth in trouble, because while ‘re-socialising dysfunctional, delinquent kids is relationship and resource intensive, … it is cheaper and more effective in the long run than detention centres and prisons. For example, it costs $11 per day for youth conferencing, and $556 per day for custody.’
(And just to explain why this is an issue, he notes that NSW has several times the number of kids in detention that Victoria has, and that over half the kids locked up are aboriginal.)
It’s the same message we hear from the ‘children at risk’ support system. Get into the family, support them, stop the family structure breaking down. Fix it, rather than manage the fallout.
So why does Gardiner’s article sound more realistic to us?
He puts the child at the centre of it.
After that early statement about the family, he talks about the child, and what they need. Let’s be blunt - he doesn’t talk about propping up a failing family structure. He advocates action with the child, and for the child. He says we need to give these children ‘the chance for social development that they have been thus far denied’.
There is no reason why support for the family shouldn’t continue. But it should be separate to support allocated to the child.
And here’s the paragraph that could well be written for children in care.
‘For intervention to work, though, it must be built on an intense engagement around a single, consistent and strong adult relationship and an alternative peer setting. Kids need an adult committed to them, and not a committee of social workers and public servants (as interagency case management often becomes).’
This issue of attachment came up in an American Academy of Paediatrics article on Developmental Issues for Young Children in Foster Care , and we wrote about it previously on our blog. Here’s the relevant paragraph from the Academy article:
‘Having at least 1 adult who is devoted to and loves a child unconditionally, who is prepared to accept and value that child for a long time, is key to helping a child overcome the stress and trauma of abuse and neglect.’
So we think those two paragraphs might contain some guidance for assessing whether a child at risk is getting what they need:
- A single, consistent and strong adult relationship
- An adult committed to them (our comment – in action, not words)
- An adult devoted to them
- An adult who loves them unconditionally
- An adult who is prepared to accept and value that child for a long time
Those of us lucky enough to grow up in a nurturing family will read those points and understand what they mean. We know what that looks and feels like.
So, how long should we take to decide a child is NOT getting that, and what are we prepared to do about it?
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Agencies' neglect fatal for Ebony
07/10/2009 23:57
There are a few circumstances in life where one mistake can be fatal. But in most cases, adults are usually involved. Adults choose to put themselves at risk.
Small children don’t choose to put themselves at risk.
Not in relation to the fundamentals – like love, family, care, learning. They rely on adults to protect them. They rely first on their parents. And our child protection system is set up to monitor, and manage, when parents fail. We expect it to work. But if the parents fail, and then the system fails, a child can die.
So what an absolute tragedy to read about a child in New South Wales who starved to death while in the care of her parents. No child should go through what Ebony went through. If ‘the system’ is the last line of defence, then it’s a huge responsibility for the people who work in ‘the system’.
We know when software fails. We know when a company fails. We know when some appliance fails. Do we know when a parent fails? You don’t just get a blue computer screen. In many cases it is not just one event that makes it obvious you have a #parentfail.
But when the risk of not acting is a child’s life, you may ask why on earth someone didn’t do something?
One of the newspaper reports stated that DoCs had ‘failed to convince the Children's Court to remove Ebony and her two older sisters from their parents, despite the fact Ebony's younger sister had been removed’. So the ‘system’ had a ‘fail’ at what appears in hindsight to have been the right course of action? Why?
The Ombudsman concluded that Ebony’s case "illustrates very clearly what can go wrong for children when agencies fail to work effectively, fail to work together and fail to take shared responsibility for the care and protection of children".
No kidding.
Small children don’t choose to put themselves at risk.
Not in relation to the fundamentals – like love, family, care, learning. They rely on adults to protect them. They rely first on their parents. And our child protection system is set up to monitor, and manage, when parents fail. We expect it to work. But if the parents fail, and then the system fails, a child can die.
So what an absolute tragedy to read about a child in New South Wales who starved to death while in the care of her parents. No child should go through what Ebony went through. If ‘the system’ is the last line of defence, then it’s a huge responsibility for the people who work in ‘the system’.
We know when software fails. We know when a company fails. We know when some appliance fails. Do we know when a parent fails? You don’t just get a blue computer screen. In many cases it is not just one event that makes it obvious you have a #parentfail.
But when the risk of not acting is a child’s life, you may ask why on earth someone didn’t do something?
- Is it because the online forums are full of condemnation at the apparent ease with which we remove children from biological parents who don’t care properly for them?
- Is it because we hear from children who have been in care that they have never managed to deal with, or been given the support to cope with, being removed from their birth parents?
- Is it because psychologists have studies that tell us that even a poor biological family is better than removing a child from them?
- Is it because the ideology favours family support and keeping a family together, no matter what?
- Is it because none of the ‘systems’ or agencies that look out for a child in NSW are linked?
- Is it because no one is able to see the complete picture?
- Is it because worker turnover meant there was never one worker with the family history?
- Is it because the processes in the main organisation charged with the responsibilities for children at risk simply don’t work?
One of the newspaper reports stated that DoCs had ‘failed to convince the Children's Court to remove Ebony and her two older sisters from their parents, despite the fact Ebony's younger sister had been removed’. So the ‘system’ had a ‘fail’ at what appears in hindsight to have been the right course of action? Why?
The Ombudsman concluded that Ebony’s case "illustrates very clearly what can go wrong for children when agencies fail to work effectively, fail to work together and fail to take shared responsibility for the care and protection of children".
No kidding.
- Agencies failing to work effectively means process improvement is required.
- Agencies failing to work together means no links (technical or personal), no reason to share and no habit of collaboration. Links need to be built and people need to be trained in collaborating. Having worked with social workers who didn’t even like collaborating with us, we suspect there’s a cultural issue to address in some sectors as well.
- Shared responsibility? That means all of us. Courts, system and community. This isn’t just a DoCS problem.
65 Australian children per 1000 are living in out of home care
20/09/2009 21:28
We don’t often see statistics in Australia about children in care. This came across our RSS feed the other week from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
As at 30 June 2008 in Australia, there were 31,116 children living in out of home care (OOHC). That’s 6.5% per 1,000, or 65 children per 1000.
One third were aged 10-14 years, one third aged 5-9 years, 25% were aged under 5 years, and 14% were aged 15-17 years.
This rate and number has more than doubled since 1997 (from 11,600 to the current number). The increase is a result of more children commencing OOHC than are being discharged from it each year. The increased duration of OOHC placements also reflects the increasing complexity in family situations.
Common family situations are low family income, parental substance abuse, mental health issues and family violence.
The majority of children - 95% - aged 0-14 were in home based care. That is split into foster care (48%) and kinship care (45%). A smaller proportion were in residential care (5%), and they were generally older children over the age of 10 years.
During 2007-08, there were 317,526 reports of suspected child-abuse and neglect made to authorities. These figures appear to indicate that the reporting of abuse has increased. Of that number, 194,937 concerned the same children. There were a total of 148,824 finalised investigations recorded in Australia (an increase of 8% on the 2005-06 year).
Pretty sobering figures, don’t you think?
As at 30 June 2008 in Australia, there were 31,116 children living in out of home care (OOHC). That’s 6.5% per 1,000, or 65 children per 1000.
One third were aged 10-14 years, one third aged 5-9 years, 25% were aged under 5 years, and 14% were aged 15-17 years.
This rate and number has more than doubled since 1997 (from 11,600 to the current number). The increase is a result of more children commencing OOHC than are being discharged from it each year. The increased duration of OOHC placements also reflects the increasing complexity in family situations.
Common family situations are low family income, parental substance abuse, mental health issues and family violence.
The majority of children - 95% - aged 0-14 were in home based care. That is split into foster care (48%) and kinship care (45%). A smaller proportion were in residential care (5%), and they were generally older children over the age of 10 years.
During 2007-08, there were 317,526 reports of suspected child-abuse and neglect made to authorities. These figures appear to indicate that the reporting of abuse has increased. Of that number, 194,937 concerned the same children. There were a total of 148,824 finalised investigations recorded in Australia (an increase of 8% on the 2005-06 year).
Pretty sobering figures, don’t you think?
Humans are very poor judges
22/07/2009 22:40
‘The most fundamental problem with child protection in Australia is a philosophical one… the source of the problem is the erroneous assumption that because the protagonists in child abuse are people…the solution lies with other more socially competent people who are employed to make judicious decisions about risk and provide wise advice on parenting.’
This paragraph is from the article by James Barber published in the SMH.
If we had to summarise the article in one word (and we are not known for our brevity), we’d say it was on specialisation. It’s about making use of more specialised skills and methods in judging families and children at risk. Just as medicine has moved to make use of science over ‘practice wisdom’, Barber suggests that children’s services must follow suit.
The issue is whether humans can really detach themselves from their own prejudices and experiences to make objective decisions about other humans?
We’d all like to think we can. But whether we can or not, the other way of looking at the issue is to ask ‘are there now better ways to review information and make decisions about children and families at risk?’
It would be a brave person who said no.
Barber advocates for Evidence Based Practice, which suspends the human judgment in judging humans, and ‘which is about the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the best available evidence in making decisions about the care of individual clients’.
He mentions recent research in North America. It has proven that mathematicians and actuaries, making use of bucket loads of data in a way that one person simply cannot, are actually able to make better decisions about families at risk than social workers.
Considering that the way most people manage the daily onslaught of work and life challenges is to find the ‘norm’ or pull everything towards the average, it seems entirely reasonable to us that more technology, science and skill is required to handle some of the critical calls in children’s services.
And if the out of home care system is only going to be more distributed to the private agencies, as per the Wood Royal Commission recommendations, more rigour, science and common standards are essential.
It sounds funny to consider that certain parts of the children’s services model need to lose the human element, but after mulling over this for a week we think it does.
This paragraph is from the article by James Barber published in the SMH.
If we had to summarise the article in one word (and we are not known for our brevity), we’d say it was on specialisation. It’s about making use of more specialised skills and methods in judging families and children at risk. Just as medicine has moved to make use of science over ‘practice wisdom’, Barber suggests that children’s services must follow suit.
The issue is whether humans can really detach themselves from their own prejudices and experiences to make objective decisions about other humans?
We’d all like to think we can. But whether we can or not, the other way of looking at the issue is to ask ‘are there now better ways to review information and make decisions about children and families at risk?’
It would be a brave person who said no.
Barber advocates for Evidence Based Practice, which suspends the human judgment in judging humans, and ‘which is about the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the best available evidence in making decisions about the care of individual clients’.
He mentions recent research in North America. It has proven that mathematicians and actuaries, making use of bucket loads of data in a way that one person simply cannot, are actually able to make better decisions about families at risk than social workers.
Considering that the way most people manage the daily onslaught of work and life challenges is to find the ‘norm’ or pull everything towards the average, it seems entirely reasonable to us that more technology, science and skill is required to handle some of the critical calls in children’s services.
And if the out of home care system is only going to be more distributed to the private agencies, as per the Wood Royal Commission recommendations, more rigour, science and common standards are essential.
It sounds funny to consider that certain parts of the children’s services model need to lose the human element, but after mulling over this for a week we think it does.
A child's right to privacy
16/06/2009 21:41
As foster carers who have a front row seat on how the system should work better, we’d like to inject a note of caution in response to The Australian’s editorial A Dangerous Secrecy (11/06/09).
It was part of the Oz’s reporting on eight children taken into care.
The editorial comments that ‘It is not abused and neglected children who are damaged by publicity, it is the people who hurt them’.
We don’t have a problem with publicity as long as it gets something fixed. We don’t have a problem with freer constraints on reporting matters of public interest, as long as it is done very, very carefully. We’ve asked before whether more information from skilful journos may be in order (see our previous post Reporting more detail on children in care?)
But a child in care has the right to grow up with the privacy the rest of us enjoy. They have enough issues to deal with in relation to who they are and where they came from. They do not need details of their lives spread out for all in their community to read, and remember.
You may face this privacy issue quite regularly in your role as carer. There are instances where adults who find out you are carers launch into twenty questions. Their motives vary.
What happened? they’ll ask.
What are the circumstances with birth family?
Sometimes people even try to be helpful: Were there drugs or mental health or violence or neglect or abandonment or health or developmental delay or behaviour issues?
So what do you say? You may feel cornered, and you may try to stumble through some explanation.
Here’s what we would say, with a smile: ‘Oh, we’re not at liberty to go into any of that with anyone outside the child’s immediate family’. If pushed, we will elaborate further with: ‘All of that information is private to the child’. And if we think a further explanation might make them think twice about being quite so intrusive next time, we might finish with: ‘The child does not deserve to have the details of their private life shared with anyone other than their immediate family’. Keep smiling while you say it, you’d be surprised how that diffuses things.
These children aren’t public property. And we need to be careful not to use them as such, even if our intention is to try to fix the system.
It was part of the Oz’s reporting on eight children taken into care.
The editorial comments that ‘It is not abused and neglected children who are damaged by publicity, it is the people who hurt them’.
We don’t have a problem with publicity as long as it gets something fixed. We don’t have a problem with freer constraints on reporting matters of public interest, as long as it is done very, very carefully. We’ve asked before whether more information from skilful journos may be in order (see our previous post Reporting more detail on children in care?)
But a child in care has the right to grow up with the privacy the rest of us enjoy. They have enough issues to deal with in relation to who they are and where they came from. They do not need details of their lives spread out for all in their community to read, and remember.
You may face this privacy issue quite regularly in your role as carer. There are instances where adults who find out you are carers launch into twenty questions. Their motives vary.
What happened? they’ll ask.
What are the circumstances with birth family?
Sometimes people even try to be helpful: Were there drugs or mental health or violence or neglect or abandonment or health or developmental delay or behaviour issues?
So what do you say? You may feel cornered, and you may try to stumble through some explanation.
Here’s what we would say, with a smile: ‘Oh, we’re not at liberty to go into any of that with anyone outside the child’s immediate family’. If pushed, we will elaborate further with: ‘All of that information is private to the child’. And if we think a further explanation might make them think twice about being quite so intrusive next time, we might finish with: ‘The child does not deserve to have the details of their private life shared with anyone other than their immediate family’. Keep smiling while you say it, you’d be surprised how that diffuses things.
These children aren’t public property. And we need to be careful not to use them as such, even if our intention is to try to fix the system.
Children in care need a pushy parent
13/05/2009 06:41
‘England's care system needs a radical overhaul with the state acting as a "pushy parent" to get the very best for the children in its charge, MPs say.’
We understand the sentiment behind this call in the UK, reported on the BBC in April. Someone needs to – let’s say it like it is – fight for these children, or never give up, just like a parent who loves them dearly.
So in theory, OK. At a system level, the state should put in place the best care for these children, and use its considerable muscle to make sure that level of care is provided.
But the state – a collective, anonymous, corporate entity – cannot replicate a parent’s care. Individual workers of real empathy and talent may bond with and counsel children in care. But let’s hope the MPs haven’t gotten carried away.
‘A report by the Commons' Children, Schools and Families Committee says the state fails as a "parent" because it does not demand enough from services.’
Good luck to them. We hope the ‘services’ are up to it. As foster parents, we demanded more from our agency. Like a seat at the table in decisions about the child, and an evaluation of whether their ‘one size fitted all’ policy really applied to our child in care. They didn’t like that. Junior manager, senior manager, and agency head honcho. They lined up one after the other like dominoes, to tell us that we were ‘just the carers’ and their policy won.
‘We welcome the government's assertion that it should become exceptional for a young person to leave care before they turn 18, and hope that it will precipitate a culture change in local authorities.’
Well, yeah. Don’t you love how the most obvious principles are restated as if they are the Eleventh Commandment? But think about what the system teaches many of these children, by bouncing them from home to home to home through their childhood. By moving these children so many times, we are actively teaching them that attachment is transient, that they will survive moving homes, and that they really shouldn’t learn to care about a family. And we’re surprised when they leave?
‘(entering the care system) must be seen as a positive experience, but this will only happen if the state can better replicate the warm, secure care of good parents for every child in the system.’
We have cared for children and become the longest term and most enduring relationships in their lives. The younger the child the more chance you have that love, warmth and security overwhelms any conscious memories of earlier unsettled times. And yet too often there seems to be no sense of urgency in finding this for children.
‘For some children care should be seen as "the best available option rather than a last resort", they said.’
Care will be the best available option for children when it is permanent. Stable. And enduring. So maybe we need to have the courage to make a decision for the child’s sake early on. Does the birth parent have a perpetual right to try and get their child back, no matter what? Too often care becomes the last resort when a rehabilitation plan fails. Or too much of the plan with birth parent is visible to the child, before there are any indications it will be successful. And the person who suffers long term damage is the child.
‘…concern for the happiness and welfare of the 60,000 children in care should be at the heart of the system.’
Everyone says this. ‘It’s all for the children’ you hear. Sometimes it can be so piously quoted to justify a viewpoint you feel like shouting. But try to break this principle down to reasonable, sensible decisions that put the child first, and too often policy, process and research get in the way.
We understand the sentiment behind this call in the UK, reported on the BBC in April. Someone needs to – let’s say it like it is – fight for these children, or never give up, just like a parent who loves them dearly.
So in theory, OK. At a system level, the state should put in place the best care for these children, and use its considerable muscle to make sure that level of care is provided.
But the state – a collective, anonymous, corporate entity – cannot replicate a parent’s care. Individual workers of real empathy and talent may bond with and counsel children in care. But let’s hope the MPs haven’t gotten carried away.
‘A report by the Commons' Children, Schools and Families Committee says the state fails as a "parent" because it does not demand enough from services.’
Good luck to them. We hope the ‘services’ are up to it. As foster parents, we demanded more from our agency. Like a seat at the table in decisions about the child, and an evaluation of whether their ‘one size fitted all’ policy really applied to our child in care. They didn’t like that. Junior manager, senior manager, and agency head honcho. They lined up one after the other like dominoes, to tell us that we were ‘just the carers’ and their policy won.
‘We welcome the government's assertion that it should become exceptional for a young person to leave care before they turn 18, and hope that it will precipitate a culture change in local authorities.’
Well, yeah. Don’t you love how the most obvious principles are restated as if they are the Eleventh Commandment? But think about what the system teaches many of these children, by bouncing them from home to home to home through their childhood. By moving these children so many times, we are actively teaching them that attachment is transient, that they will survive moving homes, and that they really shouldn’t learn to care about a family. And we’re surprised when they leave?
‘(entering the care system) must be seen as a positive experience, but this will only happen if the state can better replicate the warm, secure care of good parents for every child in the system.’
We have cared for children and become the longest term and most enduring relationships in their lives. The younger the child the more chance you have that love, warmth and security overwhelms any conscious memories of earlier unsettled times. And yet too often there seems to be no sense of urgency in finding this for children.
‘For some children care should be seen as "the best available option rather than a last resort", they said.’
Care will be the best available option for children when it is permanent. Stable. And enduring. So maybe we need to have the courage to make a decision for the child’s sake early on. Does the birth parent have a perpetual right to try and get their child back, no matter what? Too often care becomes the last resort when a rehabilitation plan fails. Or too much of the plan with birth parent is visible to the child, before there are any indications it will be successful. And the person who suffers long term damage is the child.
‘…concern for the happiness and welfare of the 60,000 children in care should be at the heart of the system.’
Everyone says this. ‘It’s all for the children’ you hear. Sometimes it can be so piously quoted to justify a viewpoint you feel like shouting. But try to break this principle down to reasonable, sensible decisions that put the child first, and too often policy, process and research get in the way.
Reporting more detail on children in care?
28/04/2009 17:20
This came from Caroline Overington (#overingtonc) via Twitter. The full article is called The girl in the window, and recounts, in quite astonishing detail, the story of a 9 year old Florida girl.
She was so neglected and abused in her birth family that she now suffers developmental delay of the most extreme, fundamental kind. She has been adopted by a family who are trying to mend what they can. The article discloses a great deal of personal information about the child and her birth family, and a lot of detail on what the child experienced.
It should be compulsory reading for anyone who thinks they have an informed opinion on children’s services.
So, why can’t Overington and other responsible journos report this type of story, at this level of detail, in Australia?
Should we be able to report this type of story at this level of detail?
How can you work to a solution when no one is able to openly discuss the problem?
Can you educate all the people involved when the facts remain hidden?
Can you bring struggling parents to some degree of self-awareness if they never hear other stories they might identify with?
Can you report at this level of detail and still protect people’s privacy, particularly the children’s?
Perhaps it is time for a new approach.
Just today it was reported that ’Australian health and welfare agencies … formed a taskforce to combat increasing numbers of child abuse and neglect, which reached 55,000 cases last year’.
With notifications for alleged child abuse and neglect almost tripling in Australia between 1999 and 2007, the problem isn’t being solved by existing methods.
So maybe the time has come to give some committed, experienced, responsible journos the green light to start reporting.
Is it too easy to consider it ‘someone else’s problem’ if we don’t get too close to it?
When do we listen to the children?
18/04/2009 21:08
Well done to Jenny Brockie and her team for the Insight program on Kids on Divorce.
While we think it is one of the most thought-provoking shows on the box, sometimes the dive is way too shallow. Just when you think the issue is finally open, the show finishes. And presenting one perspective, while powerful, can leave a viewer wondering what the other ‘side’ is. Some of the comments on the website suggest that there is another perspective.
But Brockie and Co should be giving lessons, for they are doing what too many institutions, and individuals, have failed to do for a long time now.
They are listening.
In Brockie’s case, she asks people what they actually think. And in this episode the kids had a view on divorce and its impact on them.
LISTEN
Where does the system give the secondary players (that would be the minor children) a say? Too often they are deemed too young to know what’s best for them. But their behaviour will often tell you that what is happening to them isn’t good.
LISTEN
And yet no one asks them their view. Or if they are asked there is no follow through. We once counselled a senior corporate executive that IF he asked the question then he needed to SHOW how he was acting on the answers.
LISTEN
Children might know what they want today. And then tomorrow they want something different. That’s the nature of small people. But if you spend enough time with them, you will hear a consistent message.
LISTEN
Too often the system pays lip service to listening, and then marshals all the research to tell the individual why they are wrong. Anyone who’s done at least a year at uni knows that you can make the statistics say just about anything if you try hard enough and ask the right questions.
LISTEN
How about listening to the individual? We need a system that stops dragging people to the average. The most amazing comment we ever heard was from a private agency senior manager who told us that neither the child we were caring for nor we ourselves were unique. Well we’ve got news for you. We are. We’re happy to say that there is no one else EXACTLY the same as us in the world. That makes us unique. You wanted to classify us as average so we would fit the statistics and do as you said.
LISTEN
We watched a worker sit beside a very young child in out of home care, and listen. She asked thoughtful questions, heard the answers, asked some careful and gentle follow up questions. It was done with such care and skill that we were mightily impressed. So if one person in the system can do it, why can’t everyone?
LISTEN
We don’t raise children using statistics and averages. We use our love for the child, our knowledge of the child, and our desire to see the child become the person they deserve to be. It would be nice if the system listened a bit harder to us as well.
While we think it is one of the most thought-provoking shows on the box, sometimes the dive is way too shallow. Just when you think the issue is finally open, the show finishes. And presenting one perspective, while powerful, can leave a viewer wondering what the other ‘side’ is. Some of the comments on the website suggest that there is another perspective.
But Brockie and Co should be giving lessons, for they are doing what too many institutions, and individuals, have failed to do for a long time now.
They are listening.
In Brockie’s case, she asks people what they actually think. And in this episode the kids had a view on divorce and its impact on them.
LISTEN
Where does the system give the secondary players (that would be the minor children) a say? Too often they are deemed too young to know what’s best for them. But their behaviour will often tell you that what is happening to them isn’t good.
LISTEN
And yet no one asks them their view. Or if they are asked there is no follow through. We once counselled a senior corporate executive that IF he asked the question then he needed to SHOW how he was acting on the answers.
LISTEN
Children might know what they want today. And then tomorrow they want something different. That’s the nature of small people. But if you spend enough time with them, you will hear a consistent message.
LISTEN
Too often the system pays lip service to listening, and then marshals all the research to tell the individual why they are wrong. Anyone who’s done at least a year at uni knows that you can make the statistics say just about anything if you try hard enough and ask the right questions.
LISTEN
How about listening to the individual? We need a system that stops dragging people to the average. The most amazing comment we ever heard was from a private agency senior manager who told us that neither the child we were caring for nor we ourselves were unique. Well we’ve got news for you. We are. We’re happy to say that there is no one else EXACTLY the same as us in the world. That makes us unique. You wanted to classify us as average so we would fit the statistics and do as you said.
LISTEN
We watched a worker sit beside a very young child in out of home care, and listen. She asked thoughtful questions, heard the answers, asked some careful and gentle follow up questions. It was done with such care and skill that we were mightily impressed. So if one person in the system can do it, why can’t everyone?
LISTEN
We don’t raise children using statistics and averages. We use our love for the child, our knowledge of the child, and our desire to see the child become the person they deserve to be. It would be nice if the system listened a bit harder to us as well.
At what age can a child make his/her own decision?
06/04/2009 21:47
A decision about what? Before we launch off, let’s refine that question a bit.
There’s been a lot in the news lately regarding children trying to juggle the needs of both parents after a marriage breakdown. Yes, you heard right – the children often do the juggling – emotions, loyalty, sheer tiredness, change of homes. Unfortunately the decision often seems to pay little regard to what the children want. ‘But they are children’, you say? ‘They are too young to know what’s best for them’.
As a foster parent your child may well be juggling contact with a birth family and life with you. Depending on their age and the circumstances you may also find loyalty issues, emotions and stress come from that contact.
So at what age is a child able to offer a valid viewpoint on their contact with a non-custodial parent?
Is it 12 (mentioned in the Adoption Act) or younger? Dare we ask whether younger children, in certain circumstances, actually know what they need?
Our role, as second parents who love the child, is to prepare a child for living their life. That means teaching them to have an opinion. And it means teaching them to express that opinion. Given their circumstances and the players in their lives, we think the sooner they learn that skill the better.
And there are good things that flow from that. You can teach a child to talk about things, and not bottle it up. You can teach them to articulate how they feel and explore their reactions. You can help them work through how they feel and how to manage. Importantly, you can teach them to accept their circumstances as part of life and get it in perspective. And most importantly, you can show them what control looks like. Theirs, actually.
Having an opinion is a fundamental first step to making a decision. Creating and forming opinions, and the two way interaction that usually follows, teaches a child what a good decision looks like.
The importance of this became clear to us when we had a worker who ‘ran’ access. We have no doubts that came about because the agency had an agenda to restore the child to birth parent, combined with a ferocious ‘tick-the-box’ approach. The agency paid lip-service to ‘we are a team and we want your contribution’ but that was a crock. Not only did the relentlessly artificial management of the visit unsettle the child mightily, it created a false expectation in the birth family about prospects in the future.
We think that the adults in ‘the system’, from workers to the judiciary, need to listen a lot more carefully to the small people.
There’s been a lot in the news lately regarding children trying to juggle the needs of both parents after a marriage breakdown. Yes, you heard right – the children often do the juggling – emotions, loyalty, sheer tiredness, change of homes. Unfortunately the decision often seems to pay little regard to what the children want. ‘But they are children’, you say? ‘They are too young to know what’s best for them’.
As a foster parent your child may well be juggling contact with a birth family and life with you. Depending on their age and the circumstances you may also find loyalty issues, emotions and stress come from that contact.
So at what age is a child able to offer a valid viewpoint on their contact with a non-custodial parent?
Is it 12 (mentioned in the Adoption Act) or younger? Dare we ask whether younger children, in certain circumstances, actually know what they need?
Our role, as second parents who love the child, is to prepare a child for living their life. That means teaching them to have an opinion. And it means teaching them to express that opinion. Given their circumstances and the players in their lives, we think the sooner they learn that skill the better.
And there are good things that flow from that. You can teach a child to talk about things, and not bottle it up. You can teach them to articulate how they feel and explore their reactions. You can help them work through how they feel and how to manage. Importantly, you can teach them to accept their circumstances as part of life and get it in perspective. And most importantly, you can show them what control looks like. Theirs, actually.
Having an opinion is a fundamental first step to making a decision. Creating and forming opinions, and the two way interaction that usually follows, teaches a child what a good decision looks like.
The importance of this became clear to us when we had a worker who ‘ran’ access. We have no doubts that came about because the agency had an agenda to restore the child to birth parent, combined with a ferocious ‘tick-the-box’ approach. The agency paid lip-service to ‘we are a team and we want your contribution’ but that was a crock. Not only did the relentlessly artificial management of the visit unsettle the child mightily, it created a false expectation in the birth family about prospects in the future.
We think that the adults in ‘the system’, from workers to the judiciary, need to listen a lot more carefully to the small people.
US laws ban single foster carers
22/03/2009 21:55
We’ve had debates about obese people fostering, and now a number of US states have passed laws that will, among other things, prevent single carers from fostering.
It seems inconceivable that policy-makers would try to limit who can apply, when the most important thing should be finding these children someone to love them.
What’s behind it? The conservative movement considers that the appropriate family is a mum, a dad and the kids.
Well, that’s great. In a perfect world. But most children entering care left a perfect world far behind them, if in fact they ever knew it. Many of them have never experienced the glorious ‘nuclear family’. They wouldn’t know it if they tripped over it. So why should it be the only type of care available?
Maybe, just maybe, the best care for many of these children might be finding one person who loves them. Just one. Who really loves them. And cares about them. Perhaps that’s all it takes?
The authorities have an obligation to seek out the best for these children once they enter care. But that doesn’t mean the nuclear family is essential in all instances. And it doesn’t mean the nuclear family is possible in all circumstances.
Should these children be denied a home where one parent who loves and nurtures them might be more than they have ever had before?
We know many single carers, both foster parents and birth parents. Without exception they are very aware of what they need to supplement, for themselves and for the children, to provide a well-balanced life.
So for a solo mother, that might mean a loved uncle or grandad who provides a strong male role model for the child. And vice versa for a solo father. For children of a solo parent, that might mean close contact with married couples. And so on.
Foster children often deal with a birth family, so their concept of the perfect ‘nuclear family’ is already well extended. We suspect they are not nearly as hung up on the structure of the care they go into as the moral majority. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and often the children accept this more readily than adults.
So we are pleased to see that agencies in Australia consider that sole carers, with the right support, can make excellent foster parents.
For many of these children, a stable home with one loving parent is a vast improvement on what they have experienced.
And provided the child’s education and life experience shows them all the options that make up ‘a family’, their home circumstances should be a positive thing, not a negative.
The US must be well served with carers if they can afford to be so exclusive.
It seems inconceivable that policy-makers would try to limit who can apply, when the most important thing should be finding these children someone to love them.
What’s behind it? The conservative movement considers that the appropriate family is a mum, a dad and the kids.
Well, that’s great. In a perfect world. But most children entering care left a perfect world far behind them, if in fact they ever knew it. Many of them have never experienced the glorious ‘nuclear family’. They wouldn’t know it if they tripped over it. So why should it be the only type of care available?
Maybe, just maybe, the best care for many of these children might be finding one person who loves them. Just one. Who really loves them. And cares about them. Perhaps that’s all it takes?
The authorities have an obligation to seek out the best for these children once they enter care. But that doesn’t mean the nuclear family is essential in all instances. And it doesn’t mean the nuclear family is possible in all circumstances.
Should these children be denied a home where one parent who loves and nurtures them might be more than they have ever had before?
We know many single carers, both foster parents and birth parents. Without exception they are very aware of what they need to supplement, for themselves and for the children, to provide a well-balanced life.
So for a solo mother, that might mean a loved uncle or grandad who provides a strong male role model for the child. And vice versa for a solo father. For children of a solo parent, that might mean close contact with married couples. And so on.
Foster children often deal with a birth family, so their concept of the perfect ‘nuclear family’ is already well extended. We suspect they are not nearly as hung up on the structure of the care they go into as the moral majority. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and often the children accept this more readily than adults.
So we are pleased to see that agencies in Australia consider that sole carers, with the right support, can make excellent foster parents.
For many of these children, a stable home with one loving parent is a vast improvement on what they have experienced.
And provided the child’s education and life experience shows them all the options that make up ‘a family’, their home circumstances should be a positive thing, not a negative.
The US must be well served with carers if they can afford to be so exclusive.
'Make haste slowly' implementing the Wood recommendations
01/03/2009 21:54
We don’t go around quoting the ancient Romans, but this gem from Augustus has been in our family for years, and it seems entirely apt.
We take serious issue with Mr Crispin Hull from Barnardos on a number of points in his SMH article.
He is giving the Government a right hurry up in relation to the planning and implementation of the Wood Royal Commission recommendations. He warns that DOCs and member unions might be defending their territory and resisting change.
And yet his article is at risk of sounding like a territory grab. We’re sure his intentions are admirable. But his organisation stands to gain a great deal from the proposed changes - financially, in scale and in responsibility. We’d be much happier if the hurry up came from someone who didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome.
That would be Commissioner Wood, we hear you say?
Yes. He made the recommendations. But we haven’t seen him out there jumping about in relation to the timing.
A royal commission is a royal commission. Not a detailed business or organisational restructure blueprint. There is a level of detail Commissioner Wood would not have gone into. And he had to rely on submissions which had, as their purpose, WHY a change is justified. Not HOW it should happen. That’s a whole extra piece of work. And if DOCs is as dysfunctional as everyone says, then understanding that in order to hand it over to someone else will take time.
But we already outsource to these agencies, you say?
We do, but not on this scale, and not the breadth of cases we are talking about here. So we can’t assume that the system of governance and monitoring currently in place is sufficient. And we can’t assume the agencies have processes that will scale up. And we can’t assume they will have the skill base to cope with it. And we can’t assume that moving people across from DOCs to private agencies will actually change a thing.
Here are just some of the issues that need to be solved:
How will cases be handed off between organisations and departments?
Who will ultimately be responsible for the child’s welfare?
How will the relationships be monitored?
Where is the right of appeal if things go wrong?
Who sets the standards and policies?
Who monitors the agencies to ensure their approach is consistent?
Out-sourcing is a complex beast to handle. Many companies have done it in order to provide better service and cut costs, and have found the management of it quite extraordinary.
So take the time to plan it properly, for the childrens’ sake.
We don’t have territory to defend. We just think that such a huge change needs to be planned and implemented well.
Or we might find that we end up swapping an ‘unworkable’ monolithic government department for an outsourced model where no one is accountable and children don’t just fall through the cracks, they disappear into a chasm.
We take serious issue with Mr Crispin Hull from Barnardos on a number of points in his SMH article.
He is giving the Government a right hurry up in relation to the planning and implementation of the Wood Royal Commission recommendations. He warns that DOCs and member unions might be defending their territory and resisting change.
And yet his article is at risk of sounding like a territory grab. We’re sure his intentions are admirable. But his organisation stands to gain a great deal from the proposed changes - financially, in scale and in responsibility. We’d be much happier if the hurry up came from someone who didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome.
That would be Commissioner Wood, we hear you say?
Yes. He made the recommendations. But we haven’t seen him out there jumping about in relation to the timing.
A royal commission is a royal commission. Not a detailed business or organisational restructure blueprint. There is a level of detail Commissioner Wood would not have gone into. And he had to rely on submissions which had, as their purpose, WHY a change is justified. Not HOW it should happen. That’s a whole extra piece of work. And if DOCs is as dysfunctional as everyone says, then understanding that in order to hand it over to someone else will take time.
But we already outsource to these agencies, you say?
We do, but not on this scale, and not the breadth of cases we are talking about here. So we can’t assume that the system of governance and monitoring currently in place is sufficient. And we can’t assume the agencies have processes that will scale up. And we can’t assume they will have the skill base to cope with it. And we can’t assume that moving people across from DOCs to private agencies will actually change a thing.
Here are just some of the issues that need to be solved:
How will cases be handed off between organisations and departments?
Who will ultimately be responsible for the child’s welfare?
How will the relationships be monitored?
Where is the right of appeal if things go wrong?
Who sets the standards and policies?
Who monitors the agencies to ensure their approach is consistent?
Out-sourcing is a complex beast to handle. Many companies have done it in order to provide better service and cut costs, and have found the management of it quite extraordinary.
So take the time to plan it properly, for the childrens’ sake.
We don’t have territory to defend. We just think that such a huge change needs to be planned and implemented well.
Or we might find that we end up swapping an ‘unworkable’ monolithic government department for an outsourced model where no one is accountable and children don’t just fall through the cracks, they disappear into a chasm.
Call for obese kids to be taken into care
04/02/2009 21:35
Sorry for the slight delay in posting. We’ve had lots of changes in the last couple of weeks, not the least of which has been the start of the school year and settling into a new routine.
While we’re on the subject of weight, we can tell you that on the face of it this article made us choke over our low fat breakfast cereal.
The first paragraph reads ‘SEVERELY obese children should be notified to child protection authorities, and even taken into care, if their parents are unwilling or unable to help them lose weight, experts have argued.’
We get REALLY annoyed at the apparent ease with which some ‘experts’ in child services use the term ‘taken into care’ in relation to children. Really. Annoyed.
Many children don’t get the best care from their parents. They don’t get the right diet, or the right attention, or the right education. Where do you draw the line?
We’re not social workers, and we have some sympathy for them in working out where the line should be. But poor parenting is different to negligent or dangerous parenting. The risk with articles like this is that we all end up talking about taking children off their birth families as if it’s a nice little holiday the child might go on.
Well it isn’t. And it shouldn’t be shanghaied by anyone just to reinforce the seriousness of an issue.
The Camper is currently watching a new dog find its way around our house, yard and life. She’s been involved in the whole process of finding and bringing home the new pup. She is very interested because she knows that at a young age she went through the same dislocation. So it has given us a good opportunity to discuss how a dog, and by extension, a child, might feel, and act, and deal.
We want to send a note to all the ‘experts’ to use the words ‘taken into care’ carefully.
We don’t take those words lightly, because we are at the working end of that decision. We have a child in care, and we know the effort we have had to put in to making her feel secure, the deep seated trauma she suffered in being removed from her birth family, and the complexity of her ongoing relationship with her birth family. We have no doubt the decision was the right one for her but we are glad it wasn’t taken lightly.
Taking a child into care is, and should remain, the ultimate act to secure their future.
To suggest that careless, ill-educated or simply lazy parents should be threatened with it is completely wrong. And it encourages the general public, reading a headline, to discount the real impact of such a decision.
Posted by EssentialMum
While we’re on the subject of weight, we can tell you that on the face of it this article made us choke over our low fat breakfast cereal.
The first paragraph reads ‘SEVERELY obese children should be notified to child protection authorities, and even taken into care, if their parents are unwilling or unable to help them lose weight, experts have argued.’
We get REALLY annoyed at the apparent ease with which some ‘experts’ in child services use the term ‘taken into care’ in relation to children. Really. Annoyed.
Many children don’t get the best care from their parents. They don’t get the right diet, or the right attention, or the right education. Where do you draw the line?
We’re not social workers, and we have some sympathy for them in working out where the line should be. But poor parenting is different to negligent or dangerous parenting. The risk with articles like this is that we all end up talking about taking children off their birth families as if it’s a nice little holiday the child might go on.
Well it isn’t. And it shouldn’t be shanghaied by anyone just to reinforce the seriousness of an issue.
The Camper is currently watching a new dog find its way around our house, yard and life. She’s been involved in the whole process of finding and bringing home the new pup. She is very interested because she knows that at a young age she went through the same dislocation. So it has given us a good opportunity to discuss how a dog, and by extension, a child, might feel, and act, and deal.
We want to send a note to all the ‘experts’ to use the words ‘taken into care’ carefully.
We don’t take those words lightly, because we are at the working end of that decision. We have a child in care, and we know the effort we have had to put in to making her feel secure, the deep seated trauma she suffered in being removed from her birth family, and the complexity of her ongoing relationship with her birth family. We have no doubt the decision was the right one for her but we are glad it wasn’t taken lightly.
Taking a child into care is, and should remain, the ultimate act to secure their future.
To suggest that careless, ill-educated or simply lazy parents should be threatened with it is completely wrong. And it encourages the general public, reading a headline, to discount the real impact of such a decision.
Posted by EssentialMum
Too fat to adopt?
22/01/2009 21:58
This UK couple has been told they cannot adopt because the husband is classed as ‘morbidly obese’. This is tricky territory, so we will tread carefully.
The husband acknowledges he is ‘too fat’. The local authority states ‘The council's adoption service has a legal responsibility to ensure that children are placed with adopters who are able to provide the best possible lifelong care’.
We get to play both sides of the debate on this blog. So here they are.
There are many parents who are obese, who smoke, who drink, who do recreational drugs. In most of those instances they are not denied the right to parent their birth children.
So on the face of it, are we applying a double standard to prospective adoptive or foster parents who may not be ‘perfect’?
On the other hand, there are a number of parents out there whose alcohol or drug habits have spiralled out of control, or who have mental health and other issues. They have had their children removed from their care for the children’s safety. Those children have already suffered loss in their lives.
In adoption with a new family, the children deserve to know that the family they are placed with has the capacity to look after them for the long term.
We have seen the effect of multiple moves on children. Some never recover. The Camper has given us her heart, her love and her trust. We know, quite simply, that to break that now would change her life forever.
So if we put the child first, which is a theme of this site, then this couple needs to minimise any risk to their health.
Adoptive or long term foster parents need to be as healthy and strong as they can be, not because the authority says so, but because some small child – who is going to give them his or her heart and trust - deserves it.
We would suggest that it is the same standard that should apply to ANY parent by the way. Raising children is a tiring, strenuous, whole-hearted activity. We find physical health to be key in handling the workload and the stress. It helps us parent better by being able to share physical activity with our children.
So our advice to this couple? Improve your health. There is a child out there who needs you, but they do need you for the long term. You might not have met them yet but you owe it to them already.
Posted by EssentialMum
The husband acknowledges he is ‘too fat’. The local authority states ‘The council's adoption service has a legal responsibility to ensure that children are placed with adopters who are able to provide the best possible lifelong care’.
We get to play both sides of the debate on this blog. So here they are.
There are many parents who are obese, who smoke, who drink, who do recreational drugs. In most of those instances they are not denied the right to parent their birth children.
So on the face of it, are we applying a double standard to prospective adoptive or foster parents who may not be ‘perfect’?
On the other hand, there are a number of parents out there whose alcohol or drug habits have spiralled out of control, or who have mental health and other issues. They have had their children removed from their care for the children’s safety. Those children have already suffered loss in their lives.
In adoption with a new family, the children deserve to know that the family they are placed with has the capacity to look after them for the long term.
We have seen the effect of multiple moves on children. Some never recover. The Camper has given us her heart, her love and her trust. We know, quite simply, that to break that now would change her life forever.
So if we put the child first, which is a theme of this site, then this couple needs to minimise any risk to their health.
Adoptive or long term foster parents need to be as healthy and strong as they can be, not because the authority says so, but because some small child – who is going to give them his or her heart and trust - deserves it.
We would suggest that it is the same standard that should apply to ANY parent by the way. Raising children is a tiring, strenuous, whole-hearted activity. We find physical health to be key in handling the workload and the stress. It helps us parent better by being able to share physical activity with our children.
So our advice to this couple? Improve your health. There is a child out there who needs you, but they do need you for the long term. You might not have met them yet but you owe it to them already.
Posted by EssentialMum
Contact with birth families is good
12/01/2009 23:36
We are in favour of contact with birth families – 100%.
There are many reasons why it is beneficial for a child to know their birth family. Here are some of them.
‘Who is my birth mum and/or my birth dad?’
Knowing my origins - It is very difficult for a child, particularly when they start to attend school and families are on the curriculum, to cope with a complete blank where a birth parent’s identity might be. As a carer you need an explanation that increases in detail as the child matures.
‘Why isn’t my hair dark brown like yours?’
A sense of identity - This can be important physically, as the child begins to want to emulate or be part of their second family.
‘I’m only living with you because my birth parent is a rock star’
A sense of reality – as a child grows older they may want to know why they are not with their birth family. Contact can help prevent a fantasy life evolving around a birth parent. This in turn may prevent any ‘play-offs’ between birth and second families. It can be quite devastating for an older child to meet a birth parent and experience their shortcomings. Acceptance from an early age is helpful.
‘Why did my birth parents give me up?'
Understanding and communication - An opportunity for child and birth parent to communicate on these issues can be good. It’s tricky territory, for a birth parent may not be prepared to answer the hard questions, or may be in complete denial about what actually happened and their responsibility for it. That in itself is a useful conversation for a trusted person to have with the child.
So what is the issue, for the child, around birth family contact?
BALANCE
You can completely undermine a child’s sense of security if contact with birth family overwhelms them and over-rides their daily life. Let’s state the obvious – access for a child who has a good chance of restitution with their birth family, should be very different to that of a child who has been put into the care of the Minister until they reach 18 years.
We believe that the PURPOSE of contact should be an item on any case plan.
The frequency of contact is usually covered, but we’ve not experienced an open and frank discussion about the purpose. We’ve seen this come unstuck when a worker thought they were meant to re-establish the child/birth parent relationship, when the appropriate purpose of access was to ‘maintain contact between child and birth parent’. There is a world of difference between those two objectives.
Understanding the purpose of contact will help you know how access should run.
We saw that world of difference played out in the behaviours of worker and birth parent. The workers pushed a level of interaction, and a set of rules, that alienated the child and increased her insecurity. It also resulted in a birth parent believing they had far more say in the child’s life than was the case. It was left to a more experienced worker to do damage control, and remind birth parent of the reality of the situation. It wouldn’t have happened if the issue had been discussed properly.
Understanding the purpose of contact will help you help the child manage their response to birth parent.
It will help you know which behaviours, from child and birth parent, to support, and what you should hose down. You know the child best, and you know what their life is now, so you are best placed to understand the impact access with a birth parent may have.
We’re going to have the purpose of access firmly on the agenda at our next case conference. We recommend that you discuss this with your worker until you are really clear about what it means. We think it is a useful discussion for any birth parent to participate in. And we especially recommend it as a discussion with any new worker who wants to change some aspect of access.
Posted by EssentialMum
There are many reasons why it is beneficial for a child to know their birth family. Here are some of them.
‘Who is my birth mum and/or my birth dad?’
Knowing my origins - It is very difficult for a child, particularly when they start to attend school and families are on the curriculum, to cope with a complete blank where a birth parent’s identity might be. As a carer you need an explanation that increases in detail as the child matures.
‘Why isn’t my hair dark brown like yours?’
A sense of identity - This can be important physically, as the child begins to want to emulate or be part of their second family.
‘I’m only living with you because my birth parent is a rock star’
A sense of reality – as a child grows older they may want to know why they are not with their birth family. Contact can help prevent a fantasy life evolving around a birth parent. This in turn may prevent any ‘play-offs’ between birth and second families. It can be quite devastating for an older child to meet a birth parent and experience their shortcomings. Acceptance from an early age is helpful.
‘Why did my birth parents give me up?'
Understanding and communication - An opportunity for child and birth parent to communicate on these issues can be good. It’s tricky territory, for a birth parent may not be prepared to answer the hard questions, or may be in complete denial about what actually happened and their responsibility for it. That in itself is a useful conversation for a trusted person to have with the child.
So what is the issue, for the child, around birth family contact?
BALANCE
You can completely undermine a child’s sense of security if contact with birth family overwhelms them and over-rides their daily life. Let’s state the obvious – access for a child who has a good chance of restitution with their birth family, should be very different to that of a child who has been put into the care of the Minister until they reach 18 years.
We believe that the PURPOSE of contact should be an item on any case plan.
The frequency of contact is usually covered, but we’ve not experienced an open and frank discussion about the purpose. We’ve seen this come unstuck when a worker thought they were meant to re-establish the child/birth parent relationship, when the appropriate purpose of access was to ‘maintain contact between child and birth parent’. There is a world of difference between those two objectives.
Understanding the purpose of contact will help you know how access should run.
We saw that world of difference played out in the behaviours of worker and birth parent. The workers pushed a level of interaction, and a set of rules, that alienated the child and increased her insecurity. It also resulted in a birth parent believing they had far more say in the child’s life than was the case. It was left to a more experienced worker to do damage control, and remind birth parent of the reality of the situation. It wouldn’t have happened if the issue had been discussed properly.
Understanding the purpose of contact will help you help the child manage their response to birth parent.
It will help you know which behaviours, from child and birth parent, to support, and what you should hose down. You know the child best, and you know what their life is now, so you are best placed to understand the impact access with a birth parent may have.
We’re going to have the purpose of access firmly on the agenda at our next case conference. We recommend that you discuss this with your worker until you are really clear about what it means. We think it is a useful discussion for any birth parent to participate in. And we especially recommend it as a discussion with any new worker who wants to change some aspect of access.
Posted by EssentialMum
Do foster children always become troubled teens?
28/12/2008 23:48
‘AN AMERICAN academic is to run a five-year study of NSW children who are removed from their parents and placed in foster care in the hope of finding ways to stop them becoming troubled teenagers.’ SMH 26/12/08
Well Professor Fred Wulczyn, let’s get you started on the way.
The system often prevents these children from putting down roots with a new family. Either the legal process fails to catch up with the child’s needs and the child spends too long in ‘temporary care’, or the system applies the invisible brand to them – ‘foster child’ – and demands things of them that ‘normal’ children never have to contemplate. Let us explain.
We’ve cared for children who have been bounced around the system for some years before they landed with us. Often they have been emotionally abandoned and that is obvious from the minute we meet them. Often their physical needs haven’t been well looked after either, but they can be relatively easier to fix. We throw every ounce of care, love and attention into making a child feel that we were their family, that we are here to stay.
But some workers have viewed our level of passion and commitment with nothing less than suspicion.
We know carers who foster with an agency that has a strong agenda around restitution of the children with their birth families. A new worker has suddenly told a carer, who has had a child in care from 4 months to early teen years, that she considers the child needs to have more contact with her birth mum. They see birth mum and other members of the birth family every school holidays and it is pitched at just the right level. The child is old enough to ask her foster mum, who she considers to be her mum, ‘why?’ We hope the carer has what it takes to ask the agency ‘why?’ on behalf of the child.
We can tell you that this particular child is thriving – winning awards at school, happy, a very capable sportsperson, very savvy about her circumstances - and she handles her birth mum’s probing for information with an ease well beyond her years. So she is one of Professor Wulczyn’s success stories.
So what characterises these placements?
The children have put down roots. They feel stable. They trust that nothing is going to change.
The system recognises they have been put into long term care for a very good reason, and is not trying to undermine that. The children are free to get on with living.
They have contact with their birth families, but not at the expense of time with their new families and their sense of stability. It’s a delicate balance.
Imagine if you were a child, and had a worker continually telling you how important your birth mum was, insisting you cuddle the woman when you only see her 5 times a year, reminding you to your face that you are ‘a child in care’, not calling the mum and dad you live with ‘mum’ or ‘dad’, but ‘carer? Imagine if you couldn’t have a play date with your friends on a particular day in the school holidays because of contact with your birth family. Imagine if you knew you couldn’t go away on holidays with your family because you had to be back for access with your birth family?
The agency recognises a ‘good’ placement and plays a monitoring role.
There is often a huge lack of continuity of approach from one worker to the next. Good governance demands that new workers review placements and all the circumstances around them, but aspects of the placement should not be changed without very good reason. These should be thoughtfully monitored and individually researched reasons. They should be discussed and reviewed with the carers over time before any decision to change is made. Workers should be taught that leaving their individual mark on a case is not always a sign of success.
We are good carers.
Forgive us if we state it bluntly, but we are. We treat these children as if they were our own. We don’t expect them to do anything much differently to our other children. We’re not in it for any financial gain. We love them.
So we are genuinely puzzled as to why the system has such a hard time codifying what works?
Maybe it’s not talking to the right people? Maybe it is not prepared to hear what we are saying? Maybe there are agendas and policies that the system, and those who work in it, need to give up?
Posted by EssentialMum
Well Professor Fred Wulczyn, let’s get you started on the way.
The system often prevents these children from putting down roots with a new family. Either the legal process fails to catch up with the child’s needs and the child spends too long in ‘temporary care’, or the system applies the invisible brand to them – ‘foster child’ – and demands things of them that ‘normal’ children never have to contemplate. Let us explain.
We’ve cared for children who have been bounced around the system for some years before they landed with us. Often they have been emotionally abandoned and that is obvious from the minute we meet them. Often their physical needs haven’t been well looked after either, but they can be relatively easier to fix. We throw every ounce of care, love and attention into making a child feel that we were their family, that we are here to stay.
But some workers have viewed our level of passion and commitment with nothing less than suspicion.
We know carers who foster with an agency that has a strong agenda around restitution of the children with their birth families. A new worker has suddenly told a carer, who has had a child in care from 4 months to early teen years, that she considers the child needs to have more contact with her birth mum. They see birth mum and other members of the birth family every school holidays and it is pitched at just the right level. The child is old enough to ask her foster mum, who she considers to be her mum, ‘why?’ We hope the carer has what it takes to ask the agency ‘why?’ on behalf of the child.
We can tell you that this particular child is thriving – winning awards at school, happy, a very capable sportsperson, very savvy about her circumstances - and she handles her birth mum’s probing for information with an ease well beyond her years. So she is one of Professor Wulczyn’s success stories.
So what characterises these placements?
The children have put down roots. They feel stable. They trust that nothing is going to change.
The system recognises they have been put into long term care for a very good reason, and is not trying to undermine that. The children are free to get on with living.
They have contact with their birth families, but not at the expense of time with their new families and their sense of stability. It’s a delicate balance.
Imagine if you were a child, and had a worker continually telling you how important your birth mum was, insisting you cuddle the woman when you only see her 5 times a year, reminding you to your face that you are ‘a child in care’, not calling the mum and dad you live with ‘mum’ or ‘dad’, but ‘carer? Imagine if you couldn’t have a play date with your friends on a particular day in the school holidays because of contact with your birth family. Imagine if you knew you couldn’t go away on holidays with your family because you had to be back for access with your birth family?
The agency recognises a ‘good’ placement and plays a monitoring role.
There is often a huge lack of continuity of approach from one worker to the next. Good governance demands that new workers review placements and all the circumstances around them, but aspects of the placement should not be changed without very good reason. These should be thoughtfully monitored and individually researched reasons. They should be discussed and reviewed with the carers over time before any decision to change is made. Workers should be taught that leaving their individual mark on a case is not always a sign of success.
We are good carers.
Forgive us if we state it bluntly, but we are. We treat these children as if they were our own. We don’t expect them to do anything much differently to our other children. We’re not in it for any financial gain. We love them.
So we are genuinely puzzled as to why the system has such a hard time codifying what works?
Maybe it’s not talking to the right people? Maybe it is not prepared to hear what we are saying? Maybe there are agendas and policies that the system, and those who work in it, need to give up?
Posted by EssentialMum
Foster parent rights?
15/12/2008 22:33
We’ve talked before about being called ‘foster carers’ by the system, when as far as the children in care are concerned we are their parents. An article in the SMH today threw that issue into stark focus.
You can read the article here: ‘Agony of deciding who will look after young’ – the byline is ‘An Aboriginal mother has reclaimed her children, but the foster parents are furious, writes Adele Horin.’
By our reading of the article, the two children in question have been in care for about 4-5 years, from when they were very tiny. The biological mother has reclaimed them, after getting her life back on track and establishing a stable relationship.
One paragraph really struck a chord:
‘When is the right time - if ever - to restore children to their biological parents? How is it possible to weigh up children's stability and their attachment to their long-term foster carers against the potential enduring benefits of growing up in their biological family, knowing their siblings and their culture?’
Listen to the language of that paragraph. Biological parents. Biological family. Siblings. Enduring. Adele Horin is using the terminology the system uses.
The problem is – that terminology is loaded with meaning and riddled with assumptions. We all use that language daily and it instantly evokes, for most of us, a sense of right and entitlement and relationships and outcomes.
The people these children have lived with for the last 4-5 years – the bulk - of their lives are referred to in the paragraph as ‘long term foster carers’. The article later explains that for one of the children the foster mother is ‘the only mum he's known’.
The foster carers lost out in that paragraph, big time. The language does not describe any emotional connection with the child that most of us can relate to. Attachment? Carer?
Here’s how it might have read with one small change:
‘When is the right time - if ever - to restore children to their biological parents? How is it possible to weigh up children's stability and their attachment to their second mum and dad and siblings against the potential enduring benefits of growing up in their biological family, knowing their siblings and their culture?’
The child leaps the divide – giving you their heart, their trust, their love. You become their mum and their dad. And yet the system is unwilling to acknowledge the shift. We could be cynical, and say that it helps the system justify the movement of children back to biological parents. You start by using language that maintains a distance between child and new family.
So, having trouble recruiting foster carers? No wonder. There is nothing in that story to reassure any carer that the child they have parented will be with them until the child is able make a decision about their future.
Until prospective carers hear language from the media and the ‘system’ that recognises the emotional bond we ‘carers’ create with these children, it will continue to be difficult to attract quality carers.
Posted by EssentialMum
You can read the article here: ‘Agony of deciding who will look after young’ – the byline is ‘An Aboriginal mother has reclaimed her children, but the foster parents are furious, writes Adele Horin.’
By our reading of the article, the two children in question have been in care for about 4-5 years, from when they were very tiny. The biological mother has reclaimed them, after getting her life back on track and establishing a stable relationship.
One paragraph really struck a chord:
‘When is the right time - if ever - to restore children to their biological parents? How is it possible to weigh up children's stability and their attachment to their long-term foster carers against the potential enduring benefits of growing up in their biological family, knowing their siblings and their culture?’
Listen to the language of that paragraph. Biological parents. Biological family. Siblings. Enduring. Adele Horin is using the terminology the system uses.
The problem is – that terminology is loaded with meaning and riddled with assumptions. We all use that language daily and it instantly evokes, for most of us, a sense of right and entitlement and relationships and outcomes.
The people these children have lived with for the last 4-5 years – the bulk - of their lives are referred to in the paragraph as ‘long term foster carers’. The article later explains that for one of the children the foster mother is ‘the only mum he's known’.
The foster carers lost out in that paragraph, big time. The language does not describe any emotional connection with the child that most of us can relate to. Attachment? Carer?
Here’s how it might have read with one small change:
‘When is the right time - if ever - to restore children to their biological parents? How is it possible to weigh up children's stability and their attachment to their second mum and dad and siblings against the potential enduring benefits of growing up in their biological family, knowing their siblings and their culture?’
The child leaps the divide – giving you their heart, their trust, their love. You become their mum and their dad. And yet the system is unwilling to acknowledge the shift. We could be cynical, and say that it helps the system justify the movement of children back to biological parents. You start by using language that maintains a distance between child and new family.
So, having trouble recruiting foster carers? No wonder. There is nothing in that story to reassure any carer that the child they have parented will be with them until the child is able make a decision about their future.
Until prospective carers hear language from the media and the ‘system’ that recognises the emotional bond we ‘carers’ create with these children, it will continue to be difficult to attract quality carers.
Posted by EssentialMum
The Commission Outcomes
27/11/2008 11:32
Dear Justice Wood, Premier Rees, Minister Burney and all those who will be working through Justice Wood’s recommendations,
It was big commission wasn’t it? 111 recommendations, and a significant part of those is in relation to moving responsibility for sheltering children at risk to the private sector.
Funnily enough, ask any business person and they will tell you that one of the greatest challenges in outsourcing a service is governance – who monitors the system to make sure it works as intended - and accountability. You can’t outsource accountability. So what structure will still be in place in government? I suppose that’s all to be worked out yet.
Our experience has also shown us a very great difference between DOCS workers and private agency workers – in skill, in maturity, in experience. So the uplift required for many agencies will be huge. But you knew that, didn’t you? And the officers from those agencies who presented to the commission were honest and upfront about how well they functioned, and what it would take to enable their agencies to effectively take over from DOCS. Weren’t they?
We’d like to recommend that one of the toolsets you implement, to maintain standards across this distributed agency group, and to give us carers a clearer picture of what we are entitled to expect, are service levels. They won’t solve all the problems but they will provide some clarity. You see, agencies can get pretty autocratic about how they do things, their policies and their processes. They can push an agenda relentlessly. If you are a carer with an opinion and push hard enough back they can even get a bit narky. But you knew that, didn’t you?
So good luck. It’s a shame that more of the submissions to the Commission were not made public. Then I think we’d all have a better understanding of all the issues we are dealing with. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but at present, having heard the agency and DOCS submissions, we’re just feeling a bit one-sided.
Yours faithfully,
EssentialMum
Posted by EssentialMum
It was big commission wasn’t it? 111 recommendations, and a significant part of those is in relation to moving responsibility for sheltering children at risk to the private sector.
Funnily enough, ask any business person and they will tell you that one of the greatest challenges in outsourcing a service is governance – who monitors the system to make sure it works as intended - and accountability. You can’t outsource accountability. So what structure will still be in place in government? I suppose that’s all to be worked out yet.
Our experience has also shown us a very great difference between DOCS workers and private agency workers – in skill, in maturity, in experience. So the uplift required for many agencies will be huge. But you knew that, didn’t you? And the officers from those agencies who presented to the commission were honest and upfront about how well they functioned, and what it would take to enable their agencies to effectively take over from DOCS. Weren’t they?
We’d like to recommend that one of the toolsets you implement, to maintain standards across this distributed agency group, and to give us carers a clearer picture of what we are entitled to expect, are service levels. They won’t solve all the problems but they will provide some clarity. You see, agencies can get pretty autocratic about how they do things, their policies and their processes. They can push an agenda relentlessly. If you are a carer with an opinion and push hard enough back they can even get a bit narky. But you knew that, didn’t you?
So good luck. It’s a shame that more of the submissions to the Commission were not made public. Then I think we’d all have a better understanding of all the issues we are dealing with. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but at present, having heard the agency and DOCS submissions, we’re just feeling a bit one-sided.
Yours faithfully,
EssentialMum
Posted by EssentialMum
'I am a foster child'
26/11/2008 22:17
How should children in care refer to themselves? How should you introduce them?
We don’t do labels.
So no child in care is ever, ever described to anyone as a foster child or a child in care. They are our child. Generally only those who need to know are told their status. And for anyone who needs to know (doctor, teacher), the basic facts are sufficient and explain all that needs to be said.
Foster care is the child’s legal status. So why should that be what describes them?
We sometimes used to feel like the system gives these children a secret stamp – only visible to it – that said ‘Child in Care’. Different rules apply to ‘normal’ children. This feeling wasn’t helped by the workers’ frequent response, when we disagreed about a particular action, that ‘this is what we do for all our children in care’. One approach suits all? We knew enough other carers to know that wasn’t true.
This issue about labels is really important.
Labels are pejorative. They are loaded with meaning. We have heard of children in out of home care having the term ‘foster child’ flung at them in the school playground in a derisory way.
Come to think of it, maybe the term ‘foster care’ has had its day. What does ‘foster’ mean anyway? Out-of-home care isn’t much better.
Here’s the definition of foster from dictionary.com:
We like number 3 – to care for or cherish.
We made a commitment to bring a child into our family to show them what it means to be cherished. Often they won’t have had that before. Make no mistake – often they have been the centre of attention, and had lots of people spending lots of time reviewing what’s best for them. But they won’t have been cherished. It’s the strength of that individual care that makes a difference to their lives.
We can show children what constant, unchanging love looks like, in all its shapes and colours and circumstances. We can show them how to receive it and give it. Most people take that for granted.
So we provide family care.
Maybe Family Care is the new description. A new family is caring for this child. What do you think?
Posted by EssentialMum
We don’t do labels.
So no child in care is ever, ever described to anyone as a foster child or a child in care. They are our child. Generally only those who need to know are told their status. And for anyone who needs to know (doctor, teacher), the basic facts are sufficient and explain all that needs to be said.
Foster care is the child’s legal status. So why should that be what describes them?
We sometimes used to feel like the system gives these children a secret stamp – only visible to it – that said ‘Child in Care’. Different rules apply to ‘normal’ children. This feeling wasn’t helped by the workers’ frequent response, when we disagreed about a particular action, that ‘this is what we do for all our children in care’. One approach suits all? We knew enough other carers to know that wasn’t true.
This issue about labels is really important.
Labels are pejorative. They are loaded with meaning. We have heard of children in out of home care having the term ‘foster child’ flung at them in the school playground in a derisory way.
Come to think of it, maybe the term ‘foster care’ has had its day. What does ‘foster’ mean anyway? Out-of-home care isn’t much better.
Here’s the definition of foster from dictionary.com:
- to promote the growth or development of; further; encourage, to foster new ideas
- to bring up, raise, or rear as a foster child
- to care for or cherish
- British, to place (a child) in a foster home
We like number 3 – to care for or cherish.
We made a commitment to bring a child into our family to show them what it means to be cherished. Often they won’t have had that before. Make no mistake – often they have been the centre of attention, and had lots of people spending lots of time reviewing what’s best for them. But they won’t have been cherished. It’s the strength of that individual care that makes a difference to their lives.
We can show children what constant, unchanging love looks like, in all its shapes and colours and circumstances. We can show them how to receive it and give it. Most people take that for granted.
So we provide family care.
Maybe Family Care is the new description. A new family is caring for this child. What do you think?
Posted by EssentialMum
Can we 'fix' DOCs?
22/10/2008 22:38
Rise in deaths of 'at risk' children (The Australian, Caroline Overington | October 16, 2008).
‘MORE than 150 children who died in NSW last year came from families that were known to the Department of Community Services. The figure, a quarter of all child deaths in the state, represents a 40 per cent increase on the previous year in the number of so-called "reviewable" deaths.’
‘Fix DOCs’ we hear people shriek.
But you can’t fix a problem at the macro level. So you can’t just ‘fix DOCs’.
To solve problems, you need to be very specific about the problems. You need to be honest and open about what causes them. You need to address them quite specifically. But you need to understand how fixing the problem in the middle will impact all the others surrounding it. It is essential that everyone who plays a role agrees on what the problems are and wants to solve them.
So if more children ‘at risk’ died in 2008 than in the previous year, why?
Let’s state the obvious - children were left in a home environment that was dangerous to their life or to their health. The system that is charged with making decisions about what is best for them didn’t act, couldn’t act, couldn’t monitor, or simply couldn’t solve the problems.
Here are some of the questions we think need to be asked:
There is a lot riding on the outcomes of the Wood Commission. Let’s hope that at the first level there has been a very honest assessment of what the problems are that need to be solved.
Posted by EssentialMum
‘MORE than 150 children who died in NSW last year came from families that were known to the Department of Community Services. The figure, a quarter of all child deaths in the state, represents a 40 per cent increase on the previous year in the number of so-called "reviewable" deaths.’
‘Fix DOCs’ we hear people shriek.
But you can’t fix a problem at the macro level. So you can’t just ‘fix DOCs’.
To solve problems, you need to be very specific about the problems. You need to be honest and open about what causes them. You need to address them quite specifically. But you need to understand how fixing the problem in the middle will impact all the others surrounding it. It is essential that everyone who plays a role agrees on what the problems are and wants to solve them.
So if more children ‘at risk’ died in 2008 than in the previous year, why?
Let’s state the obvious - children were left in a home environment that was dangerous to their life or to their health. The system that is charged with making decisions about what is best for them didn’t act, couldn’t act, couldn’t monitor, or simply couldn’t solve the problems.
Here are some of the questions we think need to be asked:
- At what point does the child’s right to a safe, healthy, stable life become more important then staying with their birth parents? Are there government or agency policies that influence these decisions?
- What is the risk to the child and its development if the ‘recovery or rehabilitation’ of a birth parent is slow or troubled by setbacks? Will the child’s life and development be compromised in either the short or the long term by not moving them?
- Do workers feel they have the autonomy to make a call regarding the child’s circumstances? Are they equipped to make the call? Are they supported by the system in making that call? Is the system prepared to deal with calls that may be premature?
- What if the headline we were reading reported an increase in the number of children removed from their birth families? Would we be comfortable with that?
- Are the civil liberties of birth parents over-riding the best interests of the child?
- What resources are available to the birth parents to help them cope with life, family and future? How willing and capable are the birth parents of using those resources?
- Is a system in place that can monitor birth parents’ progress and keep watch on the health and safety of the child? Can the system do this frequently enough to adequately monitor the child? If not, what is the risk to the child?
There is a lot riding on the outcomes of the Wood Commission. Let’s hope that at the first level there has been a very honest assessment of what the problems are that need to be solved.
Posted by EssentialMum
Guarantees in foster care?
09/10/2008 23:51
An article in The Australian (Thursday Oct 2, 2008) ‘Potential carers put off fostering’ (Overington and Trup) reviewed some of the confidential submissions to the Wood Royal Commission. It is well written article.
The first paragraph states ‘Tens of thousands of affluent, educated and responsible couples are ready to take the nation’s abused and neglected children into their care, if only they could be guaranteed that the children would be allowed to stay’.
What an absolute tragedy.
There are tens of thousands of couples that might have missed out on what may be the most rewarding journey of their life? And, more importantly, there are thousands of children who might have found a life with wonderful parents?
Will better education and communication change the perspective of some of those potential carers? Maybe the ‘system’ needs to make a call earlier for some children and place them in a ‘permanent’ home as soon as possible?
We took the journey. These statistics hit home because the littlest statistic is very real to us.
The fact is, you don’t get many guarantees with foster care.
These children are not adopted – you don’t get to take them in and be left alone. You deal with birth families and workers, with the legal construct of fostering. The children themselves may often have issues.
But you can work towards some certainty, before you foster:
Is there a long-term order for the child? Would you be taking them on long-term? Does this mean until the age of 18 or of ‘maturity’?
What are the birth family circumstances? Is a birth parent working towards getting the children back in a realistic and meaningful way?
What’s the agency’s long term goal? Are they aiming for restitution or permanency planning for the child? What do they see your role as?
Is the placement long term and will the agency support that?
So to all those prospective foster parents - you want guarantees the child is with you to stay? Then get in there and fight for them. Take them in, care for them, love them, bond with them, become their parent. Then you won’t need guarantees, you’ll make them. You’ll face anyone who thinks moving this child might be an option with steely eyed determination. For you are their parent. And for the first time in their lives, these children have an adult to advocate for them. Not just mouth the words, but really do it. With love and care and something at stake.
You have to decide whether you are fostering for you, or for them?
Posted by EssentialMum
The first paragraph states ‘Tens of thousands of affluent, educated and responsible couples are ready to take the nation’s abused and neglected children into their care, if only they could be guaranteed that the children would be allowed to stay’.
What an absolute tragedy.
There are tens of thousands of couples that might have missed out on what may be the most rewarding journey of their life? And, more importantly, there are thousands of children who might have found a life with wonderful parents?
Will better education and communication change the perspective of some of those potential carers? Maybe the ‘system’ needs to make a call earlier for some children and place them in a ‘permanent’ home as soon as possible?
We took the journey. These statistics hit home because the littlest statistic is very real to us.
The fact is, you don’t get many guarantees with foster care.
These children are not adopted – you don’t get to take them in and be left alone. You deal with birth families and workers, with the legal construct of fostering. The children themselves may often have issues.
But you can work towards some certainty, before you foster:
Is there a long-term order for the child? Would you be taking them on long-term? Does this mean until the age of 18 or of ‘maturity’?
What are the birth family circumstances? Is a birth parent working towards getting the children back in a realistic and meaningful way?
What’s the agency’s long term goal? Are they aiming for restitution or permanency planning for the child? What do they see your role as?
Is the placement long term and will the agency support that?
So to all those prospective foster parents - you want guarantees the child is with you to stay? Then get in there and fight for them. Take them in, care for them, love them, bond with them, become their parent. Then you won’t need guarantees, you’ll make them. You’ll face anyone who thinks moving this child might be an option with steely eyed determination. For you are their parent. And for the first time in their lives, these children have an adult to advocate for them. Not just mouth the words, but really do it. With love and care and something at stake.
You have to decide whether you are fostering for you, or for them?
Posted by EssentialMum
Questions to ask a prospective foster agency
24/09/2008 00:17
People often ask us for advice on which agency they should approach. Does it matter?
Well, yes, it does.
Agency and carer should be well matched, just like carer and child.
Over 40 years and a number of agencies, we’ve experienced:
Escalating conflict as the worker is stretched beyond their capability, experience or comfort zone. Carers discovering the non-negotiable policies of an agency many years into the placement. Hidden agendas. Workers creating a false expectation for birth parents about the placement, and the long term possibilities for the child. Workers compromising the relationship or interaction between carers and birth family members. Workers insisting on a designated ‘role’ in the foster child’s life without consideration of the carers’ wishes. Workers being completely unavailable. Lack of trust in the carer’s intentions or approach. Lack of negotiation between all parties in creating a case plan for the child.
Of course these are one sided, and many workers could give you a list of carer behaviours that defy belief. But our aim here is to facilitate successful placements for the children, and informed carers are key to that.
If we were to foster again, we'd ask some specific questions. These directly relate to the day-to-day part of the placement. They may sound negative, or too forthright. Like any relationship, everyone expects the best, but it’s the detail and the mismatched expectations that cause the problems.
Here is the list of questions we'd ask an agency:
Posted by EssentialMum
Well, yes, it does.
Agency and carer should be well matched, just like carer and child.
Over 40 years and a number of agencies, we’ve experienced:
Escalating conflict as the worker is stretched beyond their capability, experience or comfort zone. Carers discovering the non-negotiable policies of an agency many years into the placement. Hidden agendas. Workers creating a false expectation for birth parents about the placement, and the long term possibilities for the child. Workers compromising the relationship or interaction between carers and birth family members. Workers insisting on a designated ‘role’ in the foster child’s life without consideration of the carers’ wishes. Workers being completely unavailable. Lack of trust in the carer’s intentions or approach. Lack of negotiation between all parties in creating a case plan for the child.
Of course these are one sided, and many workers could give you a list of carer behaviours that defy belief. But our aim here is to facilitate successful placements for the children, and informed carers are key to that.
If we were to foster again, we'd ask some specific questions. These directly relate to the day-to-day part of the placement. They may sound negative, or too forthright. Like any relationship, everyone expects the best, but it’s the detail and the mismatched expectations that cause the problems.
Here is the list of questions we'd ask an agency:
- What is the agency’s policy in relation to birth family contact? Is the agency working towards restitution of foster child and birth family? Does the agency want to re-establish a relationship between child and birth parent? Or is the agency aiming to maintain contact between child and birth family?
- What is the agency’s policy in relation to the foster child’s relationship with their birth family? Who attends access? What are the policies in relation to what the child should call birth and foster parents? What locations are used for access (agency offices, play centres)? How flexible is this? Do the workers always attend access? At what point might the worker not attend access?
- What is the agency’s schedule for visits and follow up (phone, email) with carers? How often will these occur? What happens if the carers can’t accommodate the schedule? Will this change over time and what will cause it to change?
- Clearly describe the social worker’s role. What are the service levels carers are entitled to expect from all parties? [Service levels are a business concept where the standard of service and the approach are set out and guaranteed. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has service levels. It makes interesting reading.]
- How often do agency workers change? How long is the foster child likely to have a relationship with one worker for? How will the transition to a new worker be handled?
- What do you see the carer’s role to be? How much input will the carer have in developing the case plan for the child?
- Who can carers talk to if they are unhappy with a worker’s approach, performance or policies? What is the process they follow and what is likely to occur? What are the options?
- Does the agency recognise that at some point the carer has the most up to date knowledge of the child? What weight is the agency prepared to give that?
- At what age does the agency recognise the child’s ability to state what they want?
- What is the agency’s policy in relation to adoption by the foster family? Will it consider it on its merits or is the agency opposed to it in principal? What limitations does the agency place on it (child’s age, parents’ situation)?
Posted by EssentialMum
Don't look now: your relationship is not working
18/09/2008 11:43
We had a great conversation recently with our social worker. It was around upcoming activities, holiday birth family contact and arrangements. What made it so great?
We exchanged views with the worker on a couple of issues. We listened to them, they listened to us, and we agreed on an approach that we were both happy with. Importantly, we both agreed that the child’s requirements were the most important ones. With such a clear agreement about the priority, coming to a solution was easy.
Sounds simple really. But it isn’t always.
We’ve experienced worker/carer meltdown. After several harmonious years, we were assigned a new worker who wanted to change the world, change our lives, and start ‘all over again’. We put our views to the the worker. They were never given a hearing. We outlined what part of the proposed changes we couldn't accommodate. We were told we simply had to. Suddenly issues that never rose before become deal-breakers. The agency and its workers had no room for a differing point of view.
So what are your options? We can’t advise specifically, but here’s what we’ve seen.
Often a carer will try to put up with it because they are concerned that the child in care might become caught in the middle. Or they are concerned that any rising tension in dealing with a worker may flow over to the child. Often a carer, faced daily with numerous challenges in caring for the child, will simply roll with it. Too often a carer has no point of reference (or no time to chase a point of reference) to say ‘Is this really acceptable?’
The risk of going with it is that ‘bad situations’ don’t hold steady. They usually become worse. New issues give rise to new levels of conflict and irritation that build.
You need to work out where the relationship will end up.
Can you roll with it and manage around it? Can you stay calm and detached after contact with the worker? Can you manage the worker’s approach (or the agency’s policies) and still be happy with the outcome for your foster child?
If the answer to any of those is no, we’d suggest you act. Explain clearly to the worker your position. Call a meeting with their manager to discuss your perspective. Give it a go and work through suggested actions to resolve it. But if it still doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to take it higher.
Posted by EssentialMum
We exchanged views with the worker on a couple of issues. We listened to them, they listened to us, and we agreed on an approach that we were both happy with. Importantly, we both agreed that the child’s requirements were the most important ones. With such a clear agreement about the priority, coming to a solution was easy.
Sounds simple really. But it isn’t always.
We’ve experienced worker/carer meltdown. After several harmonious years, we were assigned a new worker who wanted to change the world, change our lives, and start ‘all over again’. We put our views to the the worker. They were never given a hearing. We outlined what part of the proposed changes we couldn't accommodate. We were told we simply had to. Suddenly issues that never rose before become deal-breakers. The agency and its workers had no room for a differing point of view.
So what are your options? We can’t advise specifically, but here’s what we’ve seen.
Often a carer will try to put up with it because they are concerned that the child in care might become caught in the middle. Or they are concerned that any rising tension in dealing with a worker may flow over to the child. Often a carer, faced daily with numerous challenges in caring for the child, will simply roll with it. Too often a carer has no point of reference (or no time to chase a point of reference) to say ‘Is this really acceptable?’
The risk of going with it is that ‘bad situations’ don’t hold steady. They usually become worse. New issues give rise to new levels of conflict and irritation that build.
You need to work out where the relationship will end up.
Can you roll with it and manage around it? Can you stay calm and detached after contact with the worker? Can you manage the worker’s approach (or the agency’s policies) and still be happy with the outcome for your foster child?
If the answer to any of those is no, we’d suggest you act. Explain clearly to the worker your position. Call a meeting with their manager to discuss your perspective. Give it a go and work through suggested actions to resolve it. But if it still doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to take it higher.
Posted by EssentialMum
'This is what you signed up for'
02/06/2008 22:10
We heard those words from a private agency social worker, justifying why a number of well-established routines needed to change, two years into the placement.
Nothing else had changed except the worker. Happy Camper had made great progress and settled in well. She still showed a reaction to access visits with birth family, and so every effort was made to normalize those visits for her. That meant EssentialMum came too, a safety blanket for a small child.
What was proposed was a major change:
We explained politely that we didn’t see why there was a need for such a change to the routine, when the existing one served Happy Camper well.
And those words came back to us with quite a deal of frustration from the worker.
‘This is what you signed up for.’
So what did we sign up for? It was obvious that in this circumstance the social worker’s view of it and ours were vastly different.
Did we sign up to care for this child as if she were our own? Yes.
Did we sign up to let social workers dictate, without discussion, how things should be done for this child? No.
In our family, we acknowledge the professional expertise of many people we deal with (we actually have quite a bit of professional expertise ourselves so we respect it in others). But we don't blindly accept it. Bringing our view of what's right and appropriate for this child (living with her means we actually know her REALLY WELL now) is called responsibility.
That's what we signed up for.
This same agency cheerfully gave us a copy of Mary Ann Goodearle's book Everything but the Kids - A Guide to Foster Parenting (for full publishing details see the Resources Tab). One chapter specifically talks about foster parents demanding a seat at the table and taking responsibility for decisions regarding the child, not merely updating a social worker on how the child is reacting and expecting the social worker to make the decision.
Our experience is that, like corporates and firms and government departments, some agencies and workers may talk the talk. But they will find foster parents confronting when they offer an opinion and are prepared to suggest a course of action. You may hear the words 'collaboration' and 'value your opinion'. If you choose to speak up, expressing your opinion may create tension. How you work through that, and whether in fact it can be resolved, is another issue.
Posted by EssentialMum
Nothing else had changed except the worker. Happy Camper had made great progress and settled in well. She still showed a reaction to access visits with birth family, and so every effort was made to normalize those visits for her. That meant EssentialMum came too, a safety blanket for a small child.
What was proposed was a major change:
- A new schedule for far more frequent social worker visits, on a day that suited the social worker but not the foster family.
- A new approach for visits between Happy Camper and her birth family that excluded EssentialMum.
- A more 'significant' role for social worker in Happy Camper's life.
We explained politely that we didn’t see why there was a need for such a change to the routine, when the existing one served Happy Camper well.
And those words came back to us with quite a deal of frustration from the worker.
‘This is what you signed up for.’
So what did we sign up for? It was obvious that in this circumstance the social worker’s view of it and ours were vastly different.
Did we sign up to care for this child as if she were our own? Yes.
Did we sign up to let social workers dictate, without discussion, how things should be done for this child? No.
In our family, we acknowledge the professional expertise of many people we deal with (we actually have quite a bit of professional expertise ourselves so we respect it in others). But we don't blindly accept it. Bringing our view of what's right and appropriate for this child (living with her means we actually know her REALLY WELL now) is called responsibility.
That's what we signed up for.
This same agency cheerfully gave us a copy of Mary Ann Goodearle's book Everything but the Kids - A Guide to Foster Parenting (for full publishing details see the Resources Tab). One chapter specifically talks about foster parents demanding a seat at the table and taking responsibility for decisions regarding the child, not merely updating a social worker on how the child is reacting and expecting the social worker to make the decision.
Our experience is that, like corporates and firms and government departments, some agencies and workers may talk the talk. But they will find foster parents confronting when they offer an opinion and are prepared to suggest a course of action. You may hear the words 'collaboration' and 'value your opinion'. If you choose to speak up, expressing your opinion may create tension. How you work through that, and whether in fact it can be resolved, is another issue.
Posted by EssentialMum