Develop an information pack outlining the arrangements for providing quality care for looked after children and young people.
Response.
Care is split into many different sectors, if a child or young person is put into the care system they will be in one of the following sectors; foster care, adoption, residential child care, young offenders institution and respite care. There are three main sectors in which children and young people are set into, these are universal, which is where they are open to provide care to all children who need it. Specialist, this is where they provide specialist care for for groups of children such as disabled children. Lastly is the targeted sector which provides a service of care for a specific group based on a characteristic such as age range.
Foster Care.
This type of care can be run by the local authority or by the private sector, foster care focuses on recruiting, approving and training the best possible foster parents. they do this by getting social workers to undertake approval checks and a panel will also give or decline approval. After all this has been done a social worker will ensure that the right match has been made for the child, if this is all correct they will carry on working with the foster carers and provide professional supervision and on-going support for them. Foster care agencies will work closely with the child's looked after social worker to make sure everything is being done correctly. Foster care agencies would usually care for children in the universal sector.
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Adoption.
Adoption agencies are usually run by the local authority or by the private sector, their main role of the job is to find a suitable parents for the child, the job of the social worker is to undertake assessments for the courts and assessments for approval. For the parents who want to adopt they provide training and pre-adoption support, this is crucial in ensuring a family can meet the child's needs, by doing this it reduces the chance of adoption breakdowns.
