Southwark fostering service statement of purpose 2024 to 25

Fostering is part of the care, care leavers and fostering service, which has lead responsibility for ensuring all children in Southwark’s care achieve permanence, either within their birth families or with suitable alternative carers. This responsibility is shared with assessment and intervention, safeguarding and family support, all age disabilities and access to resources services. 

The list of current staff and their relevant qualifications and experience will be made available to the Ofsted inspection service on request. Fostering is part of the children’s social care division. The Director of Children and Families reports directly to the corporate parenting committee and council scrutiny committee (groups of elected members) who support and challenge the work of the division. 

The fostering service is made up of four teams, under the overall leadership of the service manager fostering. 

Fostering recruitment team 

Using in house and independent social workers to assess foster carers and supported lodgings hosts

Two fostering teams

These undertake the same tasks. They welcome and induct all newly-approved foster carers, and support all foster carers where children are placed on a temporary basis. They also work with foster carers who wish to provide a permanent home for a looked after child or young person, if a child’s permanence plan is to remain with them. We also support staying put and supported lodgings arrangements.

Connected persons and special guardianship team

These are responsible for assessing family and friends as either foster carers or special guardians in order to provide continuity and stability for children who cannot remain with birth parents. We also provide support and review for current special guardians. 

In addition the team has access to clinicians from the Southwark clinical service, who offer direct consultation to staff and foster carers, along with training and workshops to help carers reflect on children’s behaviour and consider their own response in managing this. 

Each team is led by a team manager and is responsible for supervising and supporting up to seventy foster carers. Each practice group has a senior social worker, and up to six supervising social workers. A practice co-ordinator and a family support worker provide support to the three teams and the training lead. 

Following the introduction of a systemic practice model, all the practice groups meet fortnightly for reflective case discussions and group supervision. This enables the whole group to gain an understanding of the foster carers and to provide support in the absence of the allocated supervising social worker. The staff in the fostering service work very closely with their colleagues in the children’s social work teams and with the children’s services quality assurance unit (independent reviewing officers and child protection co-ordinators).

The fostering team also works with the following organisations.

Independent reviewing officers

These chair foster carers’ annual review of approval (ARA) meetings and make recommendations to the fostering panel

The fostering panel

This panel makes recommendations to the Agency Decision Maker on matters concerning the approval of foster carers. 

The Agency Decision Maker

A senior manager who makes the final decisions about the approval of foster carers, taking account of the available information and the recommendations of the fostering panel. The Agency Decision Makers for Adoption and Fostering Decisions are Assistant Director for Safeguarding and Care, Helen Woolgar and Director for Children and Families (DCS), Alasdair Smith.

Carelink

A multidisciplinary team of social workers, family therapists and clinical psychologists. Carelink is a part of Child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and plays an important part in providing therapeutic support to foster carers and children and young people who are in foster care. 

Contact service

A pool of drivers, support workers and contact supervisors who facilitate contact between looked after children and their birth families, and work with foster carers and young people to preserve placement stability. 

Southwark will always try to place looked after children and young people with Southwark approved foster carers. Sometimes, however, this is not possible and children and young people may be placed with foster carers who are approved and supported by independent fostering agencies when required, placements with IFAs are negotiated by the access to resources team (ART).