A day of growth: Reflecting, learning and strengthening our fostering practice
The whole FCA Midlands team came together on the 12th November for a development day. This was a day full of thriving discussions, learning and reflections in the roles that we carry out and the service that we deliver to children and foster parents.
Guest speakers Richard Dixon and Sarah Ayling joined us to recognise how the service is successfully matching children to foster parents.
Fostering Services Manager Karen Hodder encouraged us to think about risk and how we manage all different types of risk on a daily basis.
Fostering Services Manager Katie Bell put children’s health into the spotlight as we launch a project on oral health for children.
Senior Therapist Jane Smith, Practice Transformation and Safeguarding Manager Nichola Larkin and Registered Manager Kate Taylor led a case review from a drama therapy lens perspective. This was incredibly powerful to reflect and visualise the complex nature of fostering and social care. The use of wool amplified this.
Feedback from attendees include:
Presentation from Jane and Kate was really good, took me back to the beginning and how tangled it gets for young people, who are sadly sometimes lost in all the process we have in place to keep them safe and happy. And what I said about new foster parents being overwhelmed and having lots of information thrown at them and being matched with young people while they are still recovering from the assessment process.
I thought the day was great. I really enjoyed how interactive the learning was – especially with the last activity with the string. I think it really put things into perspective and showed me how foster parents can feel in different scenarios, especially with not coming from a fostering background. It was a very informative day and very impactful.
Great day, always interesting to hear from Sarah and Richard, it’s good to hear the performance of the region and how everyone plays a part, either directly or indirectly. I like an immersive training session so found the presentation from Kate and Jane really useful and made you stop and think for a minute about all the processes and the impact of so many people involved in a child’s life.
Interested in fostering? you could make a life-changing difference to a young person. We invite anyone looking for more information to get in touch.
