SCIE media releases 2004
SCIE publishes leading guide on good practice in fostering
13 October 2004
The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), the organisation responsible for promoting good practice in social care, launched a good practice guide on fostering today - a wide-ranging 'how to do it' guide for local authorities and fostering agencies.
Click here to see the Practice guide 3: Fostering.
The online guide, which will be updated regularly, is based on an extensive review SCIE conducted of fostering research, literature and practice in 2003.
The guide offers quick and easy access to knowledge about foster care practice to enable practitioners, carers, teams and services to think creatively about their work to benefit fostered children and young people.
It covers 18 priority foster care issues, ranging from contact with birth parents, to recruiting foster carers, to fostering children with emotional needs.
Each topic in the guide includes key research findings, practice points, practice examples, definition of terms, legislation, guidance and standards (where applicable), and an overview of current research.
Launching the guide at the House of Commons, Minister for Children, Margaret Hodge said, "SCIE's fostering practice guide is an invaluable tool for local authorities and fostering agencies. Fostering can never be prescriptive: each child has different needs, situations and goals, but there are clear messages from research and practice that some approaches work better than others and produce better outcomes for children. SCIE has captured those key messages and presented them in an easy-to-read and accessible way for fostering agencies."
Executive Director of the Fostering Network, Robert Tapsfield, who also attended the launch, said: "SCIE's focus on foster care is extremely welcome. Bringing together research knowledge and presenting this in an accessible and useable format is of enormous value. "
The guide is also useful for foster carers who can use the practice points and practice examples to campaign for better services in their own area.
Fostering is a major focus for SCIE as part of its work on promoting good practice in services for children and families. It is based on two previous SCIE publications, Knowledge review 4: A review of good practice in fostering and Knowledge review 5: An exploration of the research literature in foster care upon which the practice guide is based.
SCIE has also recently published Resource guide 4: Promoting resilience in fostered children and young people which complements the practice guide.
The resource guide provides practical advice about how to focus on the resilience-enhancing factors in the lives of fostered children and young people to help develop their self-esteem and chances of success later in life.
Chair of SCIE, Jane Campbell, said that SCIE's work on fostering was producing invaluable information for practitioners.
"SCIE's work is about providing practitioners with reliable, comprehensive and up-to-date sources of knowledge. Our work on fostering does just that. I'm sure fostering agencies will find this guide extremely useful."
The fostering practice guide and the other SCIE publications on fostering are available free from SCIE's website.
Media contact
Margaret Lynch | Press Officer | T: 020 7089 6858 | M: 07834 194 896
Notes to editors
What is a practice guide?
Practice guides are based on SCIE knowledge reviews and are developed where evidence supporting good practice is especially strong. They bring together information, research and ideas from practice. Practice guides summarise key messages for good practice and help users to develop their own knowledge and apply it effectively in their day-to-day work. They are a one-stop-shop for good practice information and as prescriptive as it is possible to be in social care. Practice guides are developed especially as online resources, so that they can be regularly updated.
Who is the fostering practice guide for?
SCIE's fostering practice guide is designed for practitioners and for all those concerned with good practice in fostering. The guide also provides foster carers with evidence to empower them to campaign for better fostering services in their area.
About SCIE's fostering practice guide
The guide is designed to enable practitioners, carers, teams and services to think creatively about their work to benefit foster children and young people. It:
- identifies major areas of importance in current fostering practice
- summarises key research findings
- suggests practice points
- gives examples and illustrations from practice
- gives definitions and details of relevant legislation, guidance and standards
- provides links to more information where possible.
Topics covered in the guide
- Contact with birth parents
- Temporary foster care
- Looked after children's physical health
- Placement stability
- Creating placement choice by partnerships and commissioning
- School and education
- Characteristics of foster carers
- Children's views
- Needs of foster children from a black and minority ethnic background
- Placement of siblings
- Organisation of fostering services
- Recruiting foster carers
- Training foster carers
- Retaining foster carers
- Foster carer job satisfaction
- Fostering children with emotional needs
- Providing additional services for foster children
- User evaluation of fostering services.
How was the guide developed?
The guide was developed using SCIE Knowledge review 4: A review of good practice in fostering and Knowledge review 5: An exploration of the research literature in foster care. SCIE knowledge reviews are a systematic review of all available knowledge about a particular area of social care. This can include the views of users and carers, practitioner knowledge, knowledge gained from inspection and monitoring and knowledge gained from research. In this way a knowledge review improves understanding about a particular aspect of social care by presenting a summary of common practices and identifying areas where more work is needed to inform good practice. Practice guides are based on SCIE knowledge reviews and are developed where evidence supporting good practice is especially strong.
To access the fostering practice guide
Click here to see the Practice guide 3: Fostering.
