Care

We will change our Sibling Separation Assessment to a Family Connections Assessment.

We will end the barriers that get in the way when children and young people who live in our children’s houses want to spend their money.

We will make sure that our carers in our children’s houses use words that children and young people like, and that communicate love and care.

We will develop a Framework of Care that helps the care and love in all of our children’s houses to feel the same. Plus our Young People’s Advisory Group will tell us if the care and love in our children’s house is as good as it can be.

We will try our best to have foster carers that can look after children of all ages and family sizes. Plus we will try to have fostering families that can also be adoptive families for young children if a decision is made that they will not be able to live with their parents forever. We will support children, young people and their fostering families to understand what has gone wrong when foster carers decide that they can’t care for children anymore. This will help the foster carers to get the right help and the children know that it wasn’t their fault.

We will have people responsible for making sure that we are always trying to find ways for brothers and sisters to live together. We will provide training to our foster carers to help them understand how they can help to keep brothers and sisters in contact with one another. Brothers and sisters should see each other in one another’s houses, and should be able to phone and video call each other when they want to. Plus children and young people who want to live with their brothers and sisters in our children’s houses, can do so.

We will work with the Care Inspectorate to make sure that we can make good decisions to keep brothers and sisters living together. This might mean that they share a bedroom, or live with a foster carer who is meant to care for only 2 children instead of 3 etc.

Reporters will always support brothers and sisters to contribute to Hearings where they have the right to do so. Plus all of our Reporters will be trained to understand how children and young people develop.

We will make sure that our host families that care for our unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young people can care for theirs brothers and sisters too.

We will keep working with Police Scotland to make sure that young people living in our children’s houses who do not come home on time are not reported missing and come into contact with the police unless we really think that they are missing and not just staying out late.

We will work with Housing First to make sure that young people with care experience can have their own homes when they want to. Young people with care experience will be involved in designing new accommodation services for young people who want to move on from where they are living. We are going to review all of our accommodation options for young people who are over the age of 16. Our young people will be involved in this – telling us what they think is working well, and what we need to change for them. We will make sure that young people can have their own tenancy when they feel they are ready for this and have help and supports in their home, instead of waiting until others think they are ready.

We will make sure that everyone who cares for our children and young people with care experience understands about advocacy.