As of June 2024, 657 children were in the care of Walsall Council’s children’s services. Of those, 98 – 15% – live with a “connected foster carer” which is how we refer to kinship foster carers. The council’s fostering service has 81 connected fostering households which are approved, have been assessed and have an allocated social worker.
Connected foster carers receive a fostering fee, weekly allowance and additional allowances for birthdays and holidays. If they live within the borough, they are exempt from council tax.
Mockingbird Family Model
We operate the Mockingbird Family Model, where connected foster carers can opt in to join one of six “constellations”. A constellation is where one experienced foster home – or hub – provides pretty much round-the-clock support to between six and 10 foster families, offering emergency and planned sleepovers, advice and training.
Where appropriate, many connected foster carers go on to become the child’s special guardian. The fostering service currently supports 180 special guardianship households with 350 children currently living with special guardians.
In October 2023, the fostering service launched the special guardianship order (SGO) support hub. This now has four dedicated workers supporting special guardians and families who hold a child arrangements order.
The SGO Support Hub ensures families receive the best possible support. The fostering service has also commissioned services from national charity Kinship, which provide its own programme of support for kinship carers with and without legal orders.
Louise* is one kinship carer who has been supported by the SGO Hub. She is special guardian to her niece who had struggled in school for years. Louise tried to get her niece the support she needed but felt her requests for help fell on deaf ears until she contacted the hub.
The hub arranged for a specialist assessment via the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund, which suggested Louise’s niece may have autism, sensory and mental health needs.
Louise and her niece were supported to attend child and adolescent mental health services and get a diagnosis and to get the school to change their approach to supporting the child’s learning.
Revised financial offer
We know finances are a common issue for kinship families, which is why we recently revised our financial offer. However, the biggest challenge is often housing.
Changes in family dynamics and relationships can be challenging but we offer support and mediation.
The council welcomed the new national strategy for kinship families, which aims to ensure they are better supported, empowered, and understood. We were pleased to see the commitment to trial financial allowances in eight local authorities, and the commitment to revise the statutory guidance.
In April this year, Walsall was selected as a “pathfinder” local authority for the Families First for Children programme, which is testing new approaches to delivering children’s social care.
A key goal of the programme is to ensure a flexible and responsive “team around the family” approach where family network meetings and family group conferences are used at the earliest opportunity.
These meetings will be offered to all families as standard and will be a core part of family help and child protection support.
Families are encouraged to develop their own plans and there is a focus on understanding and drawing on resources within family and social networks.
This will ensure wider family contribute at the earliest opportunity to key decisions about a child’s care, including ensuring that – where possible – children remain within family networks.
*Name changed
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Mark Burrows is group manager for fostering at Walsall Council
