- A 2015/16 pilot involved social workers at independent fostering agency Match Foster Care taking on delegated statutory responsibilities for fostered children from two councils, while continuing to supervise their carers
- Authorities retained corporate parenting responsibility for safeguarding, school and placement moves and court-ordered changes to birth family contact
ACTION
Of the 54 children placed by 11 authorities with foster carers from West Midlands fostering agency Match Foster Care in 2014, none had stayed with the same social worker since entering care, with some having up to four changes annually.
Foster families were frustrated about local authority social workers' lack of time to build trusting relationships with children and about delays in accessing support services or securing permission for holidays and other activities, due to their workloads, paperwork commitments and lack of decision-making autonomy. Match manager Jacqueline Dunster says this was leaving children and young people "powerless to influence their lives, unable to live as normal as possible and hindered from achieving their full potential".
Match managing director, and former council social worker, Carrie Marsh adds: "Children need to build trust with adults, before any meaningful exchange can take place. If a social worker has seen a child twice in six months, how can they really know what's best for that child?"
In 2014, the Match team came up with a simple solution. Its own supervising social workers could take over the authority's statutory role in supporting the children of the carers they supervise. The authority would delegate duties to Match including statutory visits, looked-after child reviews and arranging and supervising birth family contact, retaining corporate parenting responsibility for safeguarding, court-ordered birth family contact changes and school and placement changes. Independent reviewing officers would retain their roles.
The proposal was backed with £759,000 from the Department for Education's Children's Social Care Innovation Programme. Two social workers were specially recruited and Match built "wraparound" services for participating families, recruiting a fostering support worker, a nurse, an education specialist and administration staff.
Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham councils embarked on the project in May and July 2015 respectively. Three Match social workers, all experienced in frontline local authority children's social work, collectively took on eight long-term placements in five foster homes - seven were split between two newly recruited workers, while the remaining placement went to founding Match social worker Sharon Plaskitt.
Plaskitt already knew 10-year-old Clare as her foster carer's supervising social worker, and says the change was timely, as her Birmingham City Council social worker had just left. She took over the management of her care plan, co-ordinating looked-after child reviews and personal education plan meetings and ensuring health assessments were completed on time. She wrote two reports per review: one for Match and one for the authority, separately recording statutory visits, direct work, birth family contact and other activities. She visited the foster home most weeks, through monthly statutory visits to Clare, monthly formal supervision for her carer, and informal support when needed. All this amounted to around 11 extra hours per month and very little liaison was needed with the authority outside review meetings.
Plaskitt's new role enabled speedier access to therapy, health services and support, which she could arrange immediately with the relevant Match professionals. She asked the fostering support worker to work weekly with Clare, helping her understand feelings and emotions and develop confidence and self-esteem.
Plaskitt's small caseload of around 10 children enabled her to build a strong relationship with Clare's school and other key professionals, arranging meetings at short notice, which she says is often difficult for council social workers. "From my own local authority experience, if you've got a caseload of looked-after children and child protection, you tend to prioritise the child protection cases, assuming the looked-after children are already in safe places." She says her non-council status helped her build a positive, trusting relationship with Clare and her birth family, who didn't associate her with Clare's removal. Match managers chose not to extend the project beyond March 2016, mainly due to funding uncertainty. But the agency continues to provide authorities with free-of-charge access to its nurse, family support worker and contracted psychology services.
Dunster sees potential for wider roll-out of this merged social worker role. "This was absolutely not about the public versus private debate," she says. "Local authorities could do something similar."
IMPACT
Plaskitt says Clare made "amazing progress". An October 2016 evaluation report by the University of East Anglia's Centre for Research on Children and Families says Match's dual social worker role showed signs of "potential benefits for children and carers in some cases", enabling a consistent social worker and swifter access to support services. Most carers said these services were better quality than previously and young people spoke highly of their Match social workers.
But evaluators said authorities dropping out of the initiative before it began led to an unselected and much smaller participant group than planned and a shorter implementation timeframe, preventing them from meaningfully assessing its longer-term outcomes. Evaluators said dual social worker arrangements should be made on a "case by case" basis, as they may be unsuitable for children not in long-term or stable placements or already in positive relationships with council social workers.
This article is part of CYP Now's special report on foster care. Click here for more
