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Fostering panels and questions from care experienced children and young people

Paul Adams • August 27, 2023

As an independent consultant it is important that I regularly read Ofsted reports on fostering services, and in one such report I recently came across the conclusion that ‘the voices of children are not being fully included to assist in the development of the agency’ (50217924). In way of evidence for that finding, the report noted that ‘opportunities to include children’s views in panel questions… have been missed.’

The idea of panel asking set and pre-determined standard questions that have been developed by children and young people in their care, is a practice that I have come across in a few settings recently. It is encouraged in the 2019 edition of the Effective Fostering Panels book, but is a practice that concerns me for a number of reasons.

The main problem is that if the questions from care experienced children and young people are important and relevant, then they should be asked as part of the assessment, in a context where they can be explored and considered, and where the responses can impact on the recommendation regarding suitability to foster. If, by the time of panel, there are general questions that need to be asked and have not been asked, that suggests a failure on the part of the assessing social worker, and the associated quality assurance processes in that fostering service.

Alternatively, if the assessment is of a high standard and has covered all the relevant areas, then asking questions from care experienced children and young people will not be necessary, and is tokenistic. I am often asked to train panels on ‘question setting’, and it is generally accepted that asking questions ‘for the sake of asking questions’, or where they are not relevant in helping panel reach their recommendations, is a bad thing. That is true whichever way those questions are generated.

Fostering panels are part of an important legal process, and they need to function with a level of seriousness that reflects the impact their recommendations can have on people’s lives. Practice should be focussed, meaningful, competent, and efficient. Many panels struggle with ‘keeping to time’ and having a requirement to ask unnecessary and meaningless questions does not help with that. Neither is it respectful to prospective foster carers to waste their time by asking them questions that serve no useful purpose.

Support for this practice is presumably premised on the idea that someone with lived experience of being fostered, is best placed to understand what makes a good foster carer. However, that assumption has no evidential base. It is important to recognise that a child in foster carer is the expert in their own experience, which is really important, but that does not make them an expert on the assessment and recruitment of carers more generally.

In the context of this blog, it is worth emphasising the importance of routinely and effectively engaging with, and listening to, children and young people about their own individual care experiences. Sadly, that does not always happen. I recently observed a panel asking pre-agreed questions developed by children in their care council, while at the same time failing to challenge the fact that the views of the foster children living in that particular foster home, had not been sought.

There is also the issue of ensuring that questions are constructed carefully, and in a way that will elicit useful information. I was recently asked to look at some of the panel questions developed by a group of care experienced children and young people. I found that some were potentially helpful (and would have been asked in some form within any good assessment). Other questions were less useful in that they were not going to elicit any meaningful information. For example, ‘would you encourage a child with their hobbies’ is likely to result in a predictable response. Most concerningly, some questions included inappropriate terminology, and reflected discriminatory and oppressive attitudes. There is no criticism implied in the observation that children - by definition - are at a particular developmental stage (associated with age and education), and are not experts in fair and effective recruitment and assessment practices.

There might be merit in the counter-argument that in this case the problem was that the care experienced young people had not been properly trained and supported with the task they had been given. That might be so, but I would argue that there is little to be gained from spending time and effort on this, because there is a fundamental problem with the whole idea of pre-set panel questions, whoever formulates them. As noted above, any ‘standard’ or ‘set’ questions are best asked as part of the assessment itself, and not as part of the panel process. An effective panel will want to consider the specifics of the case being presented to them, and to tailor their questions accordingly. These questions will be individualised according to the issues that emerge within the assessment, and I would suggest that any panel that needs to rely on asking questions formulated independent of that assessment, is simply not fit for purpose.

So, why do fostering services encourage this practice? Conversations that I have had with practitioners suggest that some of them at least, broadly share my concerns. One panel chair told me that they are required by their agency to ask from such a list of questions, but for the most part attempt to ‘deliberately forget’. Another Registered Manager had no difficulty in accepting that the practice was tokenistic and pointless, but nevertheless wanted to continue with it ‘because Ofsted like it'.

It seems to me that there are plenty of better ways to involve care experienced children and adults in the work of panel, and the fostering service generally, but that is for another time.

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Thinking about ‘safer care’

By Paul Adams • February 25, 2024

In 2023 I wrote a good practice guide about ‘Developing a family safer caring plan’ with an accompanying template (Form FSCP). The book has been well-received, and is being used by a number of independent and local authority fostering services in England, Scotland, and Wales. I have also delivered training to some fostering services to coincide with the roll-out of these materials. One issue that has come up from time to time, is the question of whether the purpose of safer caring plans is to keep children safe, and whether the plan is a document for the child, or for the foster carer. It sounds like some of this thinking was a precursor to the following recommendation in a recent Ofsted report 50232351 (ofsted.gov.uk) : The registered person should ensure that risk assessments and safer care plans provide foster carers with a detailed understanding of the risks and risk reduction strategies for each child. Children should be provided with their own age-appropriate safe care plan. (‘Fostering Services: NMS 4.1) For me, that recommendation doesn’t distinguish between the purpose and nature of risk assessment and management plans, and family safer caring plans. I’m also not convinced that this requirement is underpinned by NMS 4.1. NMS 4.1 notes the general and uncontroversial expectation that ‘children’s safety and welfare is promoted in all foster placements.’ This should go without saying in relation to every aspect of providing foster care, and the whole child care system is predicated on that ambition. The second part of the standard requires that ‘children are protected from abuse and other forms of significant harm’ and it gives the examples of ‘sexual or labour exploitation.’ In 2021 I authored good practice guidance, with an accompanying template (Form R), about ‘Devising and updating risk assessment and management plans in fostering’. The sub-heading of that publication talks about ‘individual safeguarding plans for fostered children’, and in summary, is about keeping children and young people safe from harm. It considers numerous areas of risk or abuse, including going missing, self-harm and suicide, poor mental health, eating disorders, drug and alcohol misuse, bullying, gangs and county lines, sexual exploitation, trafficking and radicalisation, amongst some other areas. The template recognises the contextual nature of risk, and asks practitioners to consider how risk can be reduced, mitigated, and managed. Risk assessment and management plans are put together with specific children in mind, and are individualised to consider their specific needs. The guidance notes that involving children and young people in developing these plans will usually result in better outcomes, and although there may be some complexities to consider, the plans should be placed on the child’s record, and in most cases, be fully available to them in an age-appropriate way. I would argue that family safer caring plans are different, and serve a different purpose. They emerged as a practice in the 1990’s, not as a result of the need to better at keeping children safe, but as the result of concerns about the high numbers of allegations of harm being made against foster carers, usually by children in their care. The practices that were encouraged for foster carers in the early days of safer caring, were often about the implementation of rigid and formulaic rules, that were intended to make it less likely that an allegation might be made. A reading of the various serious case/ practice reviews involving foster carers makes it obvious that having a safer caring plan in place does not keep children safe. That was very clearly highlighted in the 2017 serious case review in which ‘Claire’ (aged 8) was found to have the same sexually transmitted infections as her foster carers. The safer caring plan had said that the male carer would not be alone with her, but the review concluded that this could not be ‘adequately monitored or assured.’ Furthermore, the plan had ‘put in place a veneer of assurances that the child is adequately safeguarded.’ As noted above, the NMS are clear about the need for children to be kept safe, but contrary to what is suggested by Ofsted in the inspection report quoted above, there is no requirement for children to have an individualised safer caring plan. It is important to note that safer caring is not mentioned at all in the NMS. Rather, within the foster carer Training, Skills, and Development Standards, the requirement is to ‘develop and maintain ‘safer caring’ guidelines for you and your household.’ It is described as a plan for the foster carers and their wider household, and while that includes fostered children, it does not indicate that they should be prioritised over others, or that it is about keeping them safe. That is not to suggest that safer caring plans are unimportant in how they impact on foster children. They often serve a very useful purpose in helping children to feel safe. For example, if a child has been sexually abused by a birth parent in their bedroom, it might be hugely reassuring for them to know that within the fostering household, no one will enter their room without their consent. Good practice requires that safer caring plans take full account of a child’s history, and wishes and feelings. That is one of the main themes in my good practice guidance that encourages carers to avoid blanket approaches in favour of making carefully considered decisions according to the individual needs of the children in their care, with a recognition that these will change over time. However, the safer caring plan ultimately remains a plan that is decided by the foster carers about how they will behave, and how they will encourage children to behave safely with each other in the foster home. Children will need to know about ‘the rules’ in their home, and for some children it might be helpful to see them written down. For others, having a written ‘safer caring plan’ specific to them as a foster child, might be experienced as stigmatising and upsetting, particularly to those in meaningful permanent arrangements with people they consider as parents. All families will have ‘rules’, but in most cases, they are discussed and agreed verbally in the course of day-to-day normal family life. In considering the Ofsted inspection report cited above, it is also important to challenge the idea that safer caring plans are all about ‘risk reduction strategies.’ Rather, they should be about promoting practice that is ‘risk sensible’ and not ‘risk averse’, and about maintaining ‘normal family life’ to the fullest extent possible, taking into account the needs of all household members. This is consistent with what children in foster care repeatedly tell us. Paul Adams is an independent trainer and consultant specialising in fostering.