Behind the Inspection Rating: Therapeutic fostering hits mark
Tristan Donovan
Monday, March 28, 2016
Nexus Fostering, London| independent fostering agency inspection | December 2015
Nexus Fostering has come a long way since it began as a three-person team 14 years ago. Today, the agency has six offices across England and its foster carers support 283 children and young people. Ofsted has also rated it “outstanding” in every area.
Sally Pitcher, quality assurance manager at Nexus, says part of its success is down to being led by social workers. “Having social workers as directors of the agency means that decisions that need to be taken at a higher level are practice-based and aimed at achieving the best outcome,” she says. “The directors also have a high likelihood of knowing the details of a situation or of having met the family concerned if they have to give a view. It means that all the decision-making, advocacy for change or revision of care plans, is informed and targeted with knowledge.”
This social work grounding has also led the agency to develop Care Plus, a programme that addresses trauma among looked-after children.
Ofsted says Care Plus “has had a significant impact on supporting challenging placements to continue”. “Care Plus came out of the close observation of the impact on placement stability of targeted therapeutic support, delivered by a consistent approach,” says Pitcher.
The approach sees supervising social workers and their foster carers undergo joint training on building resilience and self-regulation in children who may have risk-taking or challenging behaviour. “Broadly speaking, the psychotherapist leads a case discussion on each Care Plus placement, taking into account the background, experiences and current presentation of the young person, and from this, an individual approach to behaviours and internal beliefs is devised,” says Pitcher. “Staff and carers then practice within that guidance to bring about real and lasting change.”
While such approaches have helped Nexus maintain the outstanding grade it got in 2011, the agency has not been resting on its laurels. One new development since 2011 that Ofsted liked was making staff ambassadors for issues such as education, health and safeguarding.
Pitcher says the ambassador model helps the agency keep abreast of developments in research, regulation and best practice.
“These lead practitioners take responsibility for keeping up with changes and identifying best practice both in the ‘outside world’ and between the individual teams in our agency,” she says. “Local initiatives in geographically separated teams could take a while to share, but a practice-lead individual would know what was going on and could spread and merge together ideas more quickly and refine various models to make an agency approach to an issue.”
Nexus is also introducing “welcome boxes” for those entering foster care that it has developed with input from its young people. The idea grew out of the agency thinking about the information children get pre-placement.
“How much can actually be taken in at that time?” asks Pitcher. “Might it be better to give a collection of information to which the young person can refer when they close their bedroom door for the first time and can’t remember the names of those they have just been placed with?”
The box contains background about the carer family, contact details for their local Nexus team and information about upcoming activities.
FACT FILE
- Name: Nexus Fostering
- Location: Harrow, London
- Description: Founded in 2002, the independent fostering agency provides foster care placements for children in London, the home counties, the South East, the South West, Anglia and the Midlands. Its headquarters are in London, but it also has satellite offices in Birmingham, Cambridge, Gloucester, Norwich and Upminster. At the time of the inspection, it had 175 approved foster families on its books. It provides a wide range of placements including Staying Put and special guardianship.
- Number of children: 283 children and young people in placement
- Ofsted reference number: SC066400
HELPFUL HINTS
Don’t be a suit. When Nexus Fostering was being assessed for LILAC youth participation standard the inspectors particularly liked how the agency’s director didn’t wear a suit. Sally Pitcher, quality assurance manager at Nexus, says LILAC saw this “as a sign of approachability and ‘being real’”.
Think holistically. After the Rotherham child abuse scandal, Nexus began ensuring that its carers considered the problem when reflecting on behaviours and dealing with children going missing. “Carers and staff have to ask themselves: ‘Is there a pattern? Can I see the indicators of child sexual exploitation in this situation?’” says Pitcher. “In our practice we reinforce links between issues, rather than seeing them as either one thing or another.”
Start a book club. Nexus has a book club that supplies young people with books it sources for free or at affordable prices. Pitcher says that as well as being educational, enjoyable and fueling imagination, the books can be therapeutic too. “There are therapeutic benefits from seeing oneself described in the words of others and seeing resolution and explanation in even the simplest of stories,” she says.