INTRODUCTION

There are so many children who are in the care of social services and some for many different reasons.  These reasons could be:

·        Abuse

·        Violence

·        Badly behaved.  So bad that the parents cannot cope anymore

·        Being left alone at a young age

Sometimes children are better off not living with their parents because the children are not happy, or don’t want to be there.  A lot of the time many children have to leave their parents because they are not well enough to care for their children.  In this case it is a lot harder for the child, as the child and parent don’t want this, they both know for the time being it’s the only option.

Care is a place where children live with other children in homes, being looked after by residential social workers.  They have meetings to assess how the children are doing and to plan their future.  The care system is there, not just to help childrens parents but more so to help the children.  It is sometimes a lot harder to help one person than it is to help another, as there are so many different cases social services have to work with.  Many children end up staying in the care system till they are 16 or 18 and have to move into either homeless accomadation such as supported lodgings or into their own place, but social services sort that out for each individual before they leave.

As you read through this you will have more of an insight into the following:

• What care is
• All the different types of services that social services provide
• Different types of accommodation
• The support available during and after the time the children have spent in care and what happens when they leave.

Residential Ca re

Residential social workers are people who work in children’s homes.  They are there to try and help you understand the way of life! All children end up in care for various reasons.  Some have been abused, come from a broken family or can be just so out of control that their parents cannot cope with them.  After a poll 80% of those questioned thought children were abused through prostitution.  And a further 72% believed children abused in this way were 10 or over.  There are many residential social workers who can become very close to young people and will do their very best to listen and help them.

Their main responsibility is to make sure the children are safe and looked after. (But that is not always the case!).  In a residential home children will all have their own keyworker, who is the one who deals with everything regarding that child, such as education, doctors appointments, family visits and so on.  Every now and again there are review meetings with the keyworker, social worker, the child and anybody else who need to be there to discuss whether or not the child is improving or if they are worried about certain things and to decide whether or not they think the child is best staying in the home or going into foster care.  Many children are often best left in homes, even though it is not the best place, but many children refuse to be fostered and prefer homes (as they get away with more there!).  The residential social workers try to ensure that a child is looked after as much as possible.  They provide support, health information and advice to help young people to reach their full potential.

Building relationships with young people is very important as it will enable them to deal with problems and hopefully make the transition of independence easier.  Residential social work is a very demanding career both emotionally and physically.  It can also be very stressful and frustrating, so the ability to detach from work is important.  Residential social workers need to be patient, sympathetic and good listeners and must be willing to help with domestic work like cleaning and kitchen duties.  It’s a case of you be nice to them and they will work with you to build up a future that looks promising.  There are a lot of residential social workers who don’t help children in care to fend for themselves, for example helping you to work out their money for bills when they leave care, helping them to learn to cook and advice on housing issues and benefits. 

I feel that there should be a lot more help and advice on these issues because many young people in care have been dependant on other people for a long time and may not have any knowledge about finding their own accommodation and domestic issues such as washing and drying clothes, cooking, cleaning and economical shopping.

Accommodation is somewhere you are living for example, for children in care the options could be one of the following

• A family unit, which is a short term accommodation for a young person who may of only just gone into the care system, or if they were living somewhere and had been thrown out they would stay there until somewhere more suitable was found like
• Foster parents – who are normally married couples who foster children and let them live with them and care for them, so they feel more like they are in a family environment, which sometimes is best for the child rather than being in a children’s home.
• Adoption – A child who has lived with foster carers and has decided they would like to stay with that family and be adopted by them.  Or it may be a new born baby whose parents are not allowed to care for the child and the court has ordered adoption procedures.  There are many couples who adopt for one reason or another.  They may not be-able to have children which may be why they are interested in adoption.
• Residential unit is somewhere a child will stay for a longer period of time.  These are more for the young people who don’t want to go into foster care and also for young people who are too out of control to stay in a family environment, as this would encourage other piers in the household to do the same as them.  These children are children taken into the care system at a late age but have not been in the care system for very long.  Residential units also tend to have more children staying there, where as a family unit will only allow 2-3 children at a time.

Sometimes for whatever reasons parents are unable to look after their child.  Foster care provides the opportunity for a child to live in a family home environment rather than living in a children’s home because Manchester Social Services, like many other local authorities, has a sizeable number of children in foster care and research shows that the best place for the majority of these children is to be cared for by a foster family.  Parents will still be very involved in the care and decisions of their children.  Foster carers need to work closely with parents.  Often children will return to their parents although some may need a permanent new family, maybe even adoption.

Adoption is when people become legal parents of either babies from birth, due to the biological parents not wanting to keep their baby or for young people who cannot go back to living with their parents due to various reasons, or by order from a court.

Social Services have to look into many things when finding adoptive parents such as:

• Age
• The adoptive parents may have to be married
• Background
• Lifestyle
• Career                                                       
• Mothering skills and many more.

If you are interested in adopting for more information visit the website at adoption@mail.tameside.gov.uk.