Southwark fostering service statement of purpose 2024 to 25

Children’s safety and welfare are paramount.

Staff and foster carers will do everything possible to ensure that every child or young person can reach their full potential. 

Children and young people will be placed in foster families that celebrate and value their cultural, racial, ethnic and religious identity.

Children and young people have the right to continuity in their lives and every effort will be made to avoid unplanned placement moves. 

Looked after children and young people will be helped to maintain positive contact with birth family members and other significant people, where this is in their interests. 

Foster care is a partnership between the carers, supervising social workers and the child or young person’s social worker, working together for the young person’s best interests. 

The fostering service will work in an open, positive and respectful way with children, their parents and extended families, foster carers, children’s social workers and colleagues in schools and other agencies. 

Foster carers, children and young people and their parents should be able to challenge decisions and plans proposed by the fostering service and are made aware of the procedures whereby they can exercise their right of challenge. 

Formal decisions relating to individual children and young people in foster care should be taken in full consultation with them, their parents and their foster carers. 

Young people leaving care must be offered a continuing service that recognizes that young people may continue to need various kinds of advice, practical help and emotional support into adulthood.

The responsibilities of the placing agency to the foster carers, the purpose and goals of each placement and the responsibilities of all parties must be stated in writing.

The fostering service will provide quality and consistency in the provision of training, support and information to foster carers to enable them to meet the individual needs of children and to develop their own skills as carers. 

Services will be administered in a fair manner consistent with the council’s equality and valuing diversity policies.