Newspoints.
Holmes, David
As I write these Newspoints, the Secretary of State for Children,
Schools and Families in England has just announced a review of social
work following the Baby P case. I hope that the review will not
recommend organisational and structural reform. Instead, I hope it will
take the opportunity to look very carefully at how frontline social
workers are being supported to carry out their difficult and complex
work with vulnerable children and families, and how that support can be
improved and made more consistent for all. The focus should be on
training, quality of supervision and time to prepare for and reflect on
visits. We need to look afresh at the balance for social workers between
direct work with children and families and paperwork. We need to ensure
that all social workers are properly supported to work in difficult and
dangerous environments, to communicate effectively with children and to
manage the conflict between building relationships with clients and cool
and dispassionate observation and evidence-gathering. The review should
consider the role of co-working, the status of social work in society,
the recruitment and retention of social workers and how to improve the
morale of the workforce. And it must have at its core the fact that
social workers across the UK are protecting many tens of thousands of
children every day. This is a real opportunity to reassert the central
importance of high-quality social work in children's services.
Private fostering campaign
I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that from 19
to 25 January BAAF will be running the first national awareness-raising
campaign for private fostering. I am sure that I don't need to
remind any reader that private fostering is when a child (under 16) is
cared for by someone who is not a close relative for 28 days or more. In
order to safeguard children, the local authority where the child is to
be privately fostered must be notified of the arrangements. During the
week, BAAF will run a media campaign in partnership with national and
regional press, magazines and radio to increase understanding and
awareness of private fostering for both the general public and for those
professionals who come into contact with children in private fostering
arrangements. We hope that the campaign, under the heading 'Someone
Else's Child', will encourage more notifications of private
fostering arrangements to local authorities from private foster carers,
parents and professionals.
A new website--www.privatefostering. org.uk--has been set up full
of useful information and including podcasts from young people and
private foster carers sharing their stories. We have also worked closely
with private fostering officers from local authorities throughout
England and Wales to draw attention to the campaign and we hope that
there will be a wide range of local activities in support of it. We will
be working hard to ensure that awareness goes beyond local authorities
to all parts of the children's workforce and to all agencies that
may come across privately fostered children. Do look out for the
publicity in January and think how you could draw attention to private
fostering in your own agencies. This is such an opportunity to raise
public awareness but we need your help to make the campaign a success!
David Holmes, Chief Executive, BAAF
