As a permanent option for Looked After Children we are promoting children remaining within their family or with those adults they are connected with.
- A Connected Person is a relative, friend or any other person with a connection with a child/young person who is looked after by the local authority. This includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, adult brothers and sisters and other adult family members and friends who have an important connection to the child.
- The task we were asked to complete by the NWHOS was to develop practice and ensure consistency around the assessment process for Friends and Family as Carers across the six North Wales Authorities.
- Family Justice Review has focused the authority to really consider Family or connected persons as the preferred care plan for children needing a stable and secure placement as a permanent option
- As part of the Regional Connected Persons work a regional assessment was created. Conwy took an active role in hosting this development
- The Local authority created a Pre proceedings protocol and also undertook a mapping exercise occurred to look at the impact of connected persons in terms of resources to deliver the work. Following this mapping work it was felt that the fostering Social workers had the expertise to undertake the assessment on the adults. Therefore the Fostering Service in Conwy has allocated a full time assessing connected persons social worker and a further part time post. These individual staff will then become specialists, assessing suitable adults to care for children permanently.
- In order to ensure that all staff have been the given the necessary research and training in the field of connected persons we commissioned training for panel members, fieldwork staff and fostering staff
- Regional working group was established and still meet regularly to review the assessment tool
- As this is a new area of demand on our Services we are currently working on developing our performance indicators regarding connected persons and viability assessments
- We have developed our processes regarding initial checks which assist with meeting timescales for court and developed our monitoring systems
- We are currently reviewing the financial assessment and considering the impact of this on a North Wales basis
- The kinship Care supervising Social worker has also piloted a support group for relatives that connected carers may be able to attend in the future.