7.3 Preparing Children for Placement; Welcome Books |
In August 2021, this chapter was added to the manual.
Contents
1.
Policy
The Department will ensure that children and young people are prepared for meeting foster carers prior to coming in to care or changing placements.
2. Procedure
The Welcome Book is one of the means by which children will be prepared for placement. It should be completed during the foster carer(s) assessment phase, with guidance and support from the supervising social worker doing the assessment. Its use is mandatory and foster carers cannot veto when it is or isn’t used.
The Welcome Book should be child friendly and should be aimed at helping a child/young person know who is in the foster household, by using photographs and descriptions of the carer’s, the carer’s family, home, hobbies, interests and house rules.
Such photographs may include;
- A picture of the foster carer(s) and their first names;
- The foster child’s bedroom;
- The foster carer’s living space and garden;
- The foster carer(s) pets and their names;
- Pictures of other children/adults in the household can be shared, if the foster carer/adult agrees.
The Welcome Books will need to be quality assured by the supervising social worker doing the assessment to ensure that there is no specific identifying information held within the Welcome Book. For example, street name, house number or car registration number. The supervising social worker should also ensure that the Welcome Book is brief and child friendly.
The Welcome Book will be submitted to panel with other papers for approval.
A copy of the welcome book should be kept on the carer’s file and reviewed in line with the annual review of the carers.
The carer’s will retain a copy to share directly with any child placed.
When a child or young person is to be placed then the Supervising social worker will produce a copy of the welcome book for the child’s social worker to share with the child in preparation for a move ONLY once the placement is confirmed.
The child should not retain a copy of the book nor should the child’s social worker.
The supervising social worker will record producing a copy and retrieving the copy from the child’s social worker.
The child’s social worker will be responsible for sharing the Welcome Book with the child/young person and return it to the SSW.
The Welcome Book should never be left with a child/young person or a member of their birth family.
A copy of the welcome book should be kept on the carer’s file and reviewed in line with the annual review of the carers. Each time it is reviewed a new amended version is placed on file and the old version deleted. The version number should always equate to the annual review.
| Original Publication Date | March 2021 |
| Last Review Date | New policy |
| Next Review Date | March 2022 |
End