Does this stop someone from foster caring

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Nona
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat May 16, 2020 1:13 pm

Does this stop someone from foster caring

Post by Nona » Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:49 am

Hi ,
A family member from the other side has come forward to kinship care.
The parents have told us that they disowned him as a teenager due to arranging an armed robbery on his own mother and taking nude pictures of his younger sister and selling them to friends.

These concerns were flagged but the social worker has ignored them and doesn’t mention them in his viability and he covers the estrangement up by saying he suffered a violent childhood. The parents did not involve the police, so there is no record and he has a name change.

Please advise - worried sick for my granddaughter

Nona
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat May 16, 2020 1:13 pm

Re: Does this stop someone from kinship foster caring

Post by Nona » Fri Jan 15, 2021 9:00 am

Nona wrote: Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:49 am Hi ,
A family member from the other side has come forward to kinship care.
The parents have told us that they disowned him as a teenager due to arranging an armed robbery on his own mother and taking nude pictures of his younger sister and selling them to friends.

These concerns were flagged but the social worker has ignored them and doesn’t mention them in his viability and he covers the estrangement up by saying he suffered a violent childhood. The parents did not involve the police, so there is no record and he has a name change.

Please advise - worried sick for my granddaughter

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Suzie, FRG Adviser
Posts: 949
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 12:25 pm

Re: Does this stop someone from foster caring

Post by Suzie, FRG Adviser » Thu Feb 04, 2021 2:05 pm

Dear Nona

Welcome to the Family and Friends carers’ discussion board and thank you for your post. My name is Suzie and I am FRG’s online adviser. I am sorry that I have not been able to respond to your query sooner.

I can see that you are worried about your granddaughter and that you have concerns about a prospective kinship carer because of his worrying behaviour when he was a teenager. You believe he may have misled the social worker and that there is no police record to confirm what happened. It is a serious matter if the person being assessed deliberately misleads or gives false information as part of the assessment.

I don’t know if your granddaughter’s situation is already being discussed in court as part of court proceedings but if it is there are there are very strong rules about anyone showing a viability assessment to other people. So if you are not a party to the proceedings (grandparents aren’t usually unless they have parental responsibility) your son/daughter would see a copy but not wider family members. If a parent thinks that a viability assessment is flawed they should raise this with their lawyer as soon as possible. In fact, any concerns they have about the process or outcome should be urgently raised with their solciitor.

Of course, if you have concerns about a possible carer for your granddaughter you can also confirm in writing to children’s services what you are worried about and why and ask that they confirm they have received this information and will take it into account.

The viability assessment is only the beginning of the assessment process. If positive it does pave the way for further more detailed assessment to take place such as a fostering assessment or special guardianship assessment. As part of the assessment ‘significant historic concerns, such as incidents of child sexual abuse need to be taken extremely seriously by the assessing social worker’ and they would also need to carefully consider the carer’s relationships with their family especially in respect of how any issues could affect their capacity to provide safe and positive care to the child.

However, do remember that further assessment is always required before a decision to make a placement is made. And the viability assessment should identify the areas that need to be investigated more carefully. Both fostering and special guardianship assessments are very intensive and intrusive so if the person is having further assessment this will be very detailed. You can find out more about what is involved in these assessments in advice sheets 19 and 22 which set this out.

If there are other family members (including yourself) who are willing and able also to be assessed as potential carers for your granddaughter they should ask to be assessed as soon as possible to prevent any delay. Has a family group conference been offered to your family yet? Your son/daughter can ask for this if need be.

I hope this helps.

Please post back or call our freephone advice line 0808 8010366, Mon to Fri , 9.30 am to 3.00 pm, if you would like to speak to an adviser about your granddaughter’s situation.

With best wishes

Suzie

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