My Placement may be Breaking Down

Supporting You and the Child you Look After

Placements ending in an unplanned way nearly always leave all those concerned feeling bad. Your Supervising Social Worker will want to work with you to make sure that everything is done to support you with children and young people living with you and to manage difficulties.

When you are struggling, use your support mechanisms to help you to find a way forward.

Discuss your difficulties in supervision and ask your Supervising Social Worker to look at setting up a Placement Support Meeting. This will help identify the areas of difficulty and may make suggestions as to how these can be managed by all those involved with you and the child/young person.

Disruption Meetings

However, not all foster care placements work out. Disruption is the word used to describe a placement which ends before it was supposed to.

A disruption can also occur when Children’s Social Care feel the placement is no longer meeting the child’s needs or you decide that you are no longer able to care for a child or the child decides they do not want to stay in the placement.

It is vital that for whatever reason the placement ended, you make the move for the child as positive as possible. The Local Authority request you give the Fostering Team as much notice as possible, in order that plans can be made to move the child. A Disruption Meeting may be arranged by the child's social worker.

If you were matched long term to a child prior to them leaving then a disruption meeting must take place.

These meetings may be held a little while after the actual disruption so that some of the immediate feelings of upset have reduced. They will consider all aspects of the placement in an attempt to understand what happened. Disruption Meetings can sometimes feel threatening, but it is important to recognise that their purpose is not to blame anyone but to reach a better understanding of what happened, including whether more support should have been provided. Most carers who have been through a placement breakdown have found the Disruption Meeting helpful.

Who may attend:

• You;
• The child, if appropriate;
• Your Supervising Social Worker and their Manager;
• The child's social worker and their Manager;
• The proposed carer;
• Independent Reviewing Officer;
• Any other relevant people. 

The Chair of the meeting should ensure that the circumstances that led to the disruption are reviewed, and that everyone has the opportunity to express their views in order to:

• Find out how and why the disruption happened;
• Learn from what happened and avoid the same thing happening again - for the child/others in your home;
• Identify the positive work and good experiences for the child amongst all the difficulties;
• Support all parties involved and help them carry on and recover;
• Contribute to the future planning for the child;
• Identify work to be done and who will do it.

The Chair will make sure minutes are sent to all those involved. The report of the Disruption Meeting will be presented to the fostering panel.

A Child Looked After Review should also be arranged.

A review will be held to look at your approval terms and this will be presented to Foster Panel. If your approval does need to change you may not be approached about any other children until the outcome of Foster Panel and the ADM is known.