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

An opportunity to explore the themes, challenges and successes around working with birth relatives. Together we will explore challenges and opportunities created through the pandemic and how this has influenced changes within CAFIS to how we bring birth and adopted families together to support their child/ren.

“Everyone who wished to got a chance to speak and share. Good idea sharing forum, good to hear how other agencies are managing dilemmas and situations” – attendee, 2020

This webinar will explore how professionals who work with adopted children engage with birth relatives and the effectiveness of this.  We will look at how birth parents and relatives with lived experience of forced adoption can support current services, and discuss how it could be useful to enlist the help of birth relatives to assist with future service development around adoption.

“I attended this training on my 2nd week in my now adoption role. Prior to this I worked for 10 years on the LAC m. I enjoyed changing my perspective and hearing adoption workers views” – attendee, 2021

There will be an opportunity for participants to reflect on birth relatives input during both stage one and stage two of the foster carer and prospective adoptive parents’ assessment, how this affects current services and how it could be improved.

You will be able to network with practitioners from other agencies, share best practice and glean new ideas.

Learning outcomes

• Better understanding of the stigma that birth relatives face both by professionals and wider society particularly birth fathers.
• How to engage birth relatives.
• How the needs of children are often overshadowed by the needs of foster carers/adoptive parents.
• How lived experience can support the development of service which benefits the child.
• How involving birth parents/relatives can impact and influence the views of foster/adoptive parents in regards to family time/keeping in touch arrangements

About the trainers

CAFIS (Connecting Adoptive families Independent Services) Barnardos, is commissioned to provide a number of services on behalf of the RAA Adoption Partnership Southeast, including birth parent support, access to records, intermediary and keeping in touch arrangements for children subject to adoption and SGO.

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.