Promoting safe contact for children in public care

Option 1 (1 day course)

Aim

• To provide opportunity for staff responsible for supervising contact to understand from research and theory the importance of promoting contact between children and their families to enable the child to make sense of themselves and their origins.
• To explore imaginative ways to provide effective safer supervision of contact, while ensuring the maximum benefit for the child.

Workshop Outcome
Participants will have had opportunity to explore and consider:

• The legal requirement and procedure involved in promoting contact between a ‘Looked After’ child and their family and friends
• Establish clarity in the expectations of the agency, the child and the parent by use of a clear supervised contact agreement
• The impact of abuse on children and their families
• The confusion of emotion and divided loyalty experienced by a ‘separated-child’ and how they may express this in frustration, anger, confusion or distress towards their family, carer and professional
• Undertaking a ‘safeguarding risk assessment’ in planning and prior to arranging contact
• The significance of attachment between the child and their parent-carer, and the importance of ensuring the child maintains contact with their family safely
• Why and how contact helps a child understand and develop their identity, and self image in their cultural context
• Ways of making contact meaningful to the child and carer whilst ensuring the safety of all
• Practical skill and strategies in planning and achieving sensitive, effective safer supervision of contact between children and their families
• How ways a ‘supervisor’ can be both ‘invisible’ but ‘visible’ when necessary and when and how to intervene

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Option 2 (2 day course)

This is a two day practical workshop, during which participants will be encouraged to actively engage in group work, practical case related exercises and ‘situation-solution’ exercises. Participants will be asked to complete a reflective task in the week between the two training days. The task should only take about 30 minutes to complete, & will be considered at the beginning of the second day.

Aims of Workshop:

• To ensure those who supervise or provide supported contact have a basic awareness of child protection & and the role they take in this process and in creating a safer environment for children to have quality safe contact with their parents.
• To understand the crucial position parents hold in children’s lives in them making sense of their identity and origins & the importance of any contact being undertaken in as safe an environment as possible when parents are unable to care for their children due to ill-health or other reasons.

Workshop Outcomes:

Participants will be able to:

• List the categories and main indicators of child abuse & the sexual abuse grooming process
• Describe the legal framework & multi agency referral & investigation process in particular relating to contact between children and their families & respond appropriately to child protection concerns
• Explain the importance of child protection risk assessment in planning safe contact
• Explain the impact of abuse on children and their families
• Explain the importance of safety in working with children
• Show a variety of practical skills and strategies in planning & achieving sensitive, effective safe supervision of contact between parents and children
• Explain the significance of attachment & the bond between parent & child, the importance of helping a child to maintain contact with their family & how by maintaining such contact help a child understand more about their identity, culture, and self image
• Explain the confusion of feelings such as anger or frustration that both a parent or child may experience before and following contact & ways in which they may take out such frustration & pain in inappropriate ways, and how to effectively deal with this.

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