It's hoped a new extension to foster carer recruitment will encourage people to get involved who want to foster, but who may not have the time or ability to do so 24/7.
Siobhán Fletcher speaks to Fostering and Adoption Group Manager Ed Coates about 'short break' fostering.
Hi, well thanks for having me, Siobhan. My name's Ed Coats. I'm the group manager for the Family Placement Service within Manx Care. Part of Children and Families but we're a small but very passionate team about fostering and adoption. Those are our two main areas of work. And so we're talking today about sort of short break foster caring. Can you can you sort of explain I guess first of all what that means? Well I'll put it into a little bit of context first actually if that's all right because we've been recruiting and trying to recruit more foster carers generally across the island in the last 14, 18 months or so and we've been having some moderate success and we've got some new carers coming along to join a very passionate and incredibly committed group of foster carers we've got on the Isle of Man. And we need more. We need more general foster carers but within that what we're looking at now is recruiting some people who will be happy to take a child in for maybe a day here or a day there or sometimes a week at a time but not looking at necessarily 24, 7, 365 days a year. There's two real reasons for wanting to do that. One is the fact that some of our current carers for various reasons really need a break. We've had instances during the course of the last year where one of them needed to go into hospital for several days in a planned way and we needed somebody else to look after their child. There's other reasons people maybe have already had a planned holiday before they took on a child so we might need somebody else to look after their child for a few days or sometimes a bit longer. There's lots of reasons why our current carers might need a break but on top of that we're also looking to expand our services into an area that we already provide services for which is children with disabilities. Now there's quite a number of children with disabilities and impairments on the island and their parents and their families often need a break and we provide those sort of breaks sometimes in residential resources. We've got one in Ramsey. Many people will know this in Grove Mount and there's another one in Braden and we provide services to those families and we're looking to enhance and build upon those services. I guess just to jump in there in terms of recruiting foster carers for the start obviously there's a difference there between fostering an adoption. You've been actively recruiting. Are you seeing people signing up to be foster carers then? Is that going well? The recruitment driver has been going really quite well. We've had an awful lot of sounds or I shouldn't use a word awful, a really pleasurable lot of enquiries. A lot of people are interested. It is a challenging thing to do and so the difference between the number of people that show an interest and make contact with us and those that actually go on to become foster carers is quite stark but we have had some success and we've got some new carers on stream. We've taken new carers on during the course of the last year and we've got several more coming through the process of getting ready to become foster carers. So it's had some success. And you're saying there about short break foster carers to support parents and families with kids, with complex needs really. We've done stories here at Max Radio before about carers in general and the idea that yeah like they need a break maybe they've got other kids they want to take out for the day things like this. You said that's supplementing services that you're already doing so what are you looking to do there? Well it'll be finding a slightly different slants as well because what we'll be providing is short breaks in a home, a family home rather than in a residential or in a structured place such as Grove Mount and it's different. Basically going into the residential resource provides some really positive things such as the child will be mixing with other children. There'll be times when they can have a range of different resources in that setting but the flip side of it is that there will be lots of different people that they're dealing with and what sometimes and some children need is the individual care of a one-to-one or two-to-one if it's a couple but the same people and so and for some children with autism for example or other conditions that continuity and that frequency and familiarity can be a really vital thing that we can't quite replicate in the resource sensors. So there's differences in what we would be able to provide from what we are already providing and so it would be enhancing the service. The service is already very very highly subscribed so we actually need to build some more capacity to be able to meet the needs of the families out there who really in some cases are desperate and in some cases just really need that extra support that will help them cope in their lives and provide a better care experience for their own children and that includes the siblings as well. So there's a lot of families out there under pressure and this would be a service that would I think be welcome for some of them. Is it hoped that these short break carers would maybe be on hand to support sort of the same families time and time again against to provide that continuity for the kids because is this going to be disruptive to almost have them in a foster care environment and then for example looking at that way and then you know out for a few days with someone else is it hoped that maybe then that might be the go-to when their actual foster parent needs a break are they? Yeah yeah interesting question really thanks I mean it's actually something that we've started to think about we will be developing the service but one of the things that will be in the front middle and back of most of our minds will be the need for continuity and not having too much change. That will be subject and kind of to a degree of scrutiny each of the children will have a social worker there are already a team of social workers in the children with disabilities team and they would be looking carefully at matching the child or the family because it's kind of both with either the resource or the foster carer concerned. There may be situations where we would use more than one carer but it would certainly be advantageous to try to work with a consistency. To get the message out for people out there thinking about it could be a whole range of different ways that we do this one it could be for example it could be providing a day a week or a day every fortnight or an overnight I'm talking about probably but even daycare and so it could be done on a regular basis it might be one offs just to deal with a particular situation it may be less frequent than that or even just very occasional so it would depend on the needs of the family and the child concerned but there's and also what the the carers are able to offer so and it could be a mix of those things. There's a whole range of reasons why families kind of want or need some of that break and actually I had some fun just a really nice conversation with some of the colleagues in the children with this abilities team yesterday and they were saying why do we need this what do they what do the families and what do the children need the Ramsey Resource Center for and so on really just to get a bit background for today and they came up with a list of things like they just need time for each other sometimes because looking after this child can be very time demanding and energy sapping sometimes they need time for each other and times a big issue so sometimes it might be fair just to go out for a meal together as a couple because you can't do that when you've got a child who actually needs 24/7 cover time to give to their other children to really be one and I think I mentioned that in the press release and that can be just on a an informal basis it could be on a regular basis because that child needs to be taken to that I don't know Ganspally class football whatever it is or it could be something really important like taking them around universities to get them to you know give them that time and energy and thought and focus really so there's a whole range of reasons why families might need this for both parents to share something with the child together with another child in the family so this was something one of my colleagues explained that the the other child had never had their mum and dad in a room together without interruption and just something as simple as that kind of brought it home to me that one day a week would just give them that opportunity which would be really really valuable and so all of these things help those families um to cope and to come back with renewed energy if anyone's listening and that they're interested in maybe getting involved or getting some more information um you know where are they best to go who they best contact and and also I suppose if they were gonna dive into this I'm sure they'll get you know information as they contact you but will they be getting sort of specialized training would they you know what what's what's the process really well the first process is get in touch and um I think I haven't brought the contact details I'll put that in the story on the website thank you but the phone number six one and four zeros six one and four zeros um there is on the government website there's uh contact ways of contacting us and the starting point really would be to have a conversation with one of the team and then that's usually over the phone but I mean it can be done in the office but then we actually do set up regular information sessions they're usually about two hours long I've even bitten down the dates and times of the next ones and people can come along to those and we can share a lot more detail on both the process the pros and cons to help people themselves decide is it for them it has to be right for you the the perspective of foster carers and so we take the event through a much longer process after that if if it's right um so yeah there's there's a couple of sessions coming up and if you are interested we run one every fortnight one in the daytime one in the evening to try and fit around people's work patterns and one would be the next couple then so the next couple well the next one is Wednesday the 13th of November and that's in the daytime it's in Murray House and it's between 12 and 2 it would really help if you got in touch with us before then so that we can kind of work on numbers and if we need a bigger room and things like that and make sure we have some teas and coffees for you so the next ones are 13th of November in the day 12th until 2 and the one a fortnight after that is the 27th of November and that's between 6 and 8 so if you're getting in touch with us in the relatively near future we might actually certainly invite you down to one of those and if you can't make those we sometimes make other arrangements perfect um is there anything else you think I've missed well after after that in terms of process um if after the information session you are definitely wanting to do it what is quite a lengthy assessment process to get you assessed and and on boarders as foster carers and that's undertaken by a social worker in our team and eventually taken to the fostering panel which is an independent panel that sits and really verifies or gives you the green light to carry on so it takes about five to six months which is a long time and for a lot of people that feels like maybe a negative thing and sometimes seen as a as a barrier to becoming a foster carer but I would actually turn that on its head and say this is an enriching thing it's a chance to really think about a whole range of things how you've been brought up as a child how you react to your own children it depends on your age I mean fostering Zooten to anybody from their late 20s to their 70s so we're really looking at people from the whole age range and it helps people to really stop and reflect on their own experience and what they are likely to bring to a child that will be in their care it takes them through challenges it takes them through scenarios and different ways of looking at it and so to do it over that period of time really gives the perspective foster care a real good chance to get inside what it involves so I think you wouldn't expect to become a teacher without a training course which would be a lot longer than that you wouldn't expect to become a social worker without going for a degree so it is a kind of an assessment but it's also a training program to help make sure people are comfortable when they come out at the other end thank you for making it to the end of the Manx Radio newscast you are obviously someone with exquisite taste may I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manx Radio podcasts at your favorite 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