Who this is for

Adoption practitioners and managers (Voluntary Adoption Agencies, Regional Adoption Agencies, Local Authorities, and independent social workers), children’s social care services, children and family social workers, foster carers, kinship carers, designated teachers, and other professionals working with children and families.

Details

This training session is designed by CVAA and senior adoption practitioners at Adopt East service to help you explore with peers the key themes and challenges involved in direct contact between a child and their birth family.

Direct communication and maintaining contact with a child’s birth family has become an expectation in modern adoptions. This practice, also known as open adoption, allows for the child to have a connection with their biological family and the opportunity to know their history and cultural heritage. Direct contact also promotes ongoing communication between the adoptive family and birth family, which helps to build a relationship between the two families and allows the birth family to be a part of the child’s life in a meaningful way.

Having open lines of communication with a birth family can provide a sense of security and comfort for the adopted child, especially as they grow up and may have questions about their identity.

This training is an opportunity to explore with your peers the preparation, assessment, challenges and successes around direct contact within Adoption. You will be able to network with practitioners from other agencies, share best practice and glean new ideas.

Learning 0utcomes

• Experiences of Adopt East alongside participating agencies, the impact of these and how organisations can address these
• Key findings within research on contact
• What organisations can do to adapt approaches to contact
• Look at the future of direct contact

About the trainers

Pam Whittaker, Ann French and Shona Lawson

Pam Whittaker is the Executive Head of Adopt East which is an alliance of 8 Local Authorities in the East of England.  Pam has been a qualified social worker for over 25 years, 14 of which have been in the adoption arena.

Ann French is the Early Permanence Team Manager who has a lead for modernizing adoption.  Ann has worked in Social Care for 30 years with the last 7 years in adoption.

Shona Lawson is the Adoption Support Co-Ordinator for Adopt East.  Shona is a qualified social worker with over 25 years of experience with children and their families.  Shona has worked in Adoption for 14 years.

Instructions

A member of staff will be in touch with attendees one week prior to the event to share a pre-event delegate pack.

If you have any questions regarding this webinar, please contact us at info@cvaa.org.uk. We will aim to answer your query within two working days.

CVAA accept online payments only. In case you do not have instant access to your company card, we suggest using your personal card instead to book a training event and claim it back with your agency in your expenses. Requesting an invoice to pay for our standard practice events is not possible.

Who this is for

Adoption Practitioners, Managers, Social Workers (Voluntary Adoption Agencies, Regional Adoption Agencies and Local Authorities), Children’s Social Workers, Support Workers and Independent Professionals.

Details

A child’s life story considering best practice and learning from lived experiences, will allow adoption professionals to explore their knowledge on how to support children with life story work throughout their life. It will explore child appropriate language on how to speak about difficult topics including, domestic abuse, neglect, physical abuse and other topics that may be challenging.

This will follow the child’s journey from the conclusion from care proceedings to the final adoption order.

The training session will aim to explore a child’s journey through adoption with support from the Child and Family Workers within the Cumbrian children’s adopt team. We will be exploring the importance of relationship building with children, birth family, foster carers and adopters, while discussing life story tools to support communication and openness within families.

During the training we will share best practice and also look at tools used within the Cumbrian team and how this has supported children, foster families and adoptive families during the adoption process.

Learning outcomes

• Exploring and sharing best practice in how we work with children with their birth family, within their foster family and then supporting them moving onto their adoptive family
• Exploring how we support children to understand their life story within their foster home, along with supporting adopters to understand their child’s life story and how to support them to share this with their children
• Sharing practical tools that families have found useful
• Explore examples of the work we have completed
• Looking and reflection on feedback Cumbria County Council have had from adopters, children and foster carers

About the trainers

Kayleigh Ward is a Child and Family Worker who currently resides with the children’s adoption team within Cumbria. Kayleigh has over 5 years’ experience working with children within child protection to adoption. She also has recently completed an advance certificate in therapeutic life story work to further her development to continue to support children. Kayleigh has completed over 80 life story books and has supported over 10 children to move on from foster care to adoption, along with supporting their birth families and adoptive families to understand the child’s life story so far.

Kim Conyers is a Social Worker who currently resides with the childrens’ adoption team within Cumbria. Kim has over 6 years of supporting children within support and protection and adoption. Kim is currently completing her level 2 in BUSS training. Kim has a wealth of knowledge on supporting adoptive families and continues within the team to share her lived experiences and knowledge.

Instructions

A member of staff will be in touch with attendees one week prior to the event to share a pre-event delegate pack. If you have any questions regarding this webinar, please contact us at info@cvaa.org.uk. We will aim to answer your query within two working days.

CVAA accept online payments only. In case you do not have instant access to your company card, we suggest using your personal card instead to book a training event and claim it back with your agency in your expenses. Requesting an invoice to pay for our standard practice events is not possible.