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 expert-led training session will assist social workers to support adopters and children in keeping safe online.

The internet is a fast-changing, fantastic tool when used in the right way. Rather like Pandora’s box, once opened it will never go away. Stopping young people from accessing it, is not a solution or a possibility, teaching young people to navigate it safely is the only solution.

This is a constantly changing arena, where we are seeing risks to children changing on an almost daily basis.

“It was a real eye opener! Very real about the different areas where there are high risks. And giving practical tools to help educate and reduce the risk, but with the message that the biggest risk reducer is to come alongside and keep a relational approach.” – Attendee, 2021

For young people who may have experienced a traumatic or unstable early home life, it can support them to reach out and contact other young people with similar experiences, enabling them to share their experiences and gain support from their peers.

However, it can also create risks for any child, where they may see:

• content that can be potentially harmful, such as games which are age or developmentally inappropriate, websites with risky content
• contact from people who are not who they purport to be or with ill intent, including radicalisers and sexual content
• conduct themselves in a way that may impact on their future life chances, as anything published online, is there forever
• commerce where young people may be drawn into gambling online

Adopted children are even more at risk where they may be contacted, without preparation, by birth parents and family members or groomed by people offering them friendship, but darker intentions.

This year will see the introduction of the Online Safety Bill 2023, which will see safeguards being introduced by internet platforms, however this will not reduce the need for vigilance by both social workers and parents.

“This event was eye opening. Technology development moves so quickly it is difficult to stay updated. This event not only highlighted new apps that young people and criminals are using that I wasn’t aware of but gave practical advice that I can pass on to the families I work with” – Attendee, 2022

In this bespoke training session, we will look briefly at key facts, statistics, and research about the internet and mobile technology and the way it’s used by children and young people. We will explore how understanding those risks and how to reduce them to a manageable level. We will also explore what to do when it does go wrong, how to minimise the impact of risky behaviour online and  how to support young people, who may regret their actions online.

We will look at the tools that are available to help us keep up to date on the current risks and explore how we can minimise the risks to this vulnerable group of children.

Learning 0utcomes

• Explore how important it is for young people to be online and connected to their peers
• Consider the positives and negatives of using the internet & the specific risks to children who have been adopted
• Identify what is being accessed by young people and look at the biggest risks
• Consider online safety for the adopter- dos and don’ts
• Explore how to sensitively, raise and discuss internet safety with young people
• Consider how social media is being used by perpetrators to target, groom, and abuse young people
• Think about why young people often do not disclose what’s happening to them.
• Identify how to report concerns around internet and get materials removed.
• Identify what controls are available, the effectiveness of them and where to locate and download the instructions for implementing
• Provide information on resources that can be accessed and used by young people, parents, and professionals

About the trainer

Tammie Redman

Tammie has over 36 years experience of delivering safeguarding children to a range of professionals and volunteers. Originally working with early years’ settings, local authorities, youth, faith provision and schools. Tammie has gained experience of developing, coordinating and delivering safeguarding children training to a multi-agency range of professionals and volunteers within a variety of organisations. Tammie regularly delivers safeguarding training to volunteers and professionals from Preschools, Nurseries, Schools, Childminders, Parish Councils, Local Authorities and the voluntary, private and faith sectors. Tammie was instrumental in developing the Milton Keynes Model Basic Safeguarding Children Course and for training professionals in a variety of agencies to become trainers.

She has co-developed screening tools for FGM and CSE and rolled out training, to support staff to deliver.

She currently delivers training online as well as face to face developing basic and specialist courses to meet the current safeguarding concerns faced by practitioners, parents and children including courses that focus on online safety with separate sessions for children, parents and professionals, tackling concerns from the different perspectives.

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 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

In many cases life story work is undertaken at the point to permanence and there are varying standards across the services. 

During this practice webinar, you will hear from senior adoption practitioners at Family Care Adoption Services considering how young people not living with their birth families can benefit from Life Story work, and how the work can improve a young person’s sense of identity and promote a positive sense of worth.

“Well presented Course and source of information that the Presenters were clearly passionate about, which is very inspiring.” – attendee, 2021

Family Care Adoption Services are very excited at the prospect of a young person and significant people in their life, including siblings and birth families, being able to contribute to their life story. This means giving  young people a living chronology of their life story, family history and ultimately a true sense of their identity.

Through discussion of the Life Story process, a range of effective communication methods will be explored. Practical suggestions and ideas for working directly with young people will be discussed, which can help individuals’ piece together and develop a coherent understanding of their own histories and provide truthful answers to the many questions they have about their lives.

Consideration will be given to how to share information about difficult topics and support carers and/or adoptive parents gain confidence in discussing these issues.

“There was a lot of attendees from different profession backgrounds and with personal experience. Good to share ideas and also speak with practioners on the other side of what my role is who complete life story work later down the line.” – attendee, 2021

Learning outcomes

• consider how young people not living with their birth families can benefit from Life Story Work
• learn how the work can improve a young person’s sense of identity and promote a positive sense of worth
• a range of effective communication methods will be explored
• practical suggestions and ideas for working directly with young people
• share information about difficult topics

About the trainer

Sarah Johnston is a Social Work practitioner and the Project Co-Ordinator of the Life Story Project at Family Care Adoption Services.  The project carries out Life Story work with care experienced young people aged 11-22 alongside their parents/carers. Life Story books are created with each young person, incorporating their personal thoughts, reflections, memories and artwork.  Sarah has over 6 years’ experience of carrying out Life Story work with fostered and adopted teenagers, and facilitating workshops on this subject.

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 and managers (Voluntary Adoption Agencies, Regional Adoption Agencies and Local Authorities) and Independent Professionals.

Details

Group work for young people who are adopted can have immediate and long lasting impact on not only children and their families lives, but also enrich your organisation as a whole. By utilizing service users lived experience, organisations can be enabled to develop a better understanding of the life-long impact of adoption, what’s needed and when. Learning from the lived experience influences every part of how an agency connects with the adoption triangle.

“All the speakers were great. Mel seemed very approachable and was open about her own misgivings and how her own practice had developed. Aaron and Dani were fabulous! Such insightful, well articulated, engaging and friendly young people. All the speakers made the webinar an absolute pleasure to attend.” – Attendee, June 2021

Scottish Adoption has been running young people’s groups for over 12 years. Within this time, the influence of the impact of these young people’s groups on the practice and structure of the agency cannot be underestimated.

“[I liked…] the expertise and experience of the facilitators on this particular topic, and the contribution of the people who were adopted. Their generosity in sharing their experiences was very powerful and made the webinar even more meaningful.” – Attendee, June 2021

As part of our commitment to #keepthepromise we would like to share our knowledge base on setting up and establishing a young people’s adoption group work programme.

This training will be facilitated by Melanie Thomson, Scottish Adoption Children’s Worker and Dani Armstrong, Adoption Ambassador.

Learning outcomes

• exploring the benefits of teen work
• practical skills to start a group
• realising our young people’s aspiration that all adopted young people should have access to an adoption support group

About the trainer

Melanie Thomson is the Children’s Worker at Scottish Adoption. In addition to proving post adoption support to children and their families, Melanie facilitates a number of different groups for adopted children and young people. Melanie strongly believes in the power of group work within post adoption support and alongside her team of Adoption Ambassadors, manages the @TeenTalk social media channel https://www.scottishadoption.org/teentalk/ where the aim is create an online adoption community for children and young people and educate the wider world via their lived experience.

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.