Welcome to another week.
A pioneering programme in New York which works on a grants basis to empower families, has been shown to actively keep parents and children together, reduce the number of children going into care and save the government money.
The Child Welfare Fund provides grants to help families, and ensures that parents’ rights are protected through the creation of programmes which give families a voice, and allows them to take part in decisions affecting them, in a meaningful way. The founder of the Child Welfare Fund, David Tobis, has since been invited by the British Association Of Social Work (BASW) to share his experiences and to show social work professionals how such a system could benefit the UK, where children going into care is still at an all time high.
Tobis says:
“The fund’s approach was to provide grants to help children and families, and others, to bring about changes to a system that denied parents their rights. I worked as a community organiser in my youth, and I believe that people have a right to participate in decisions that affect their lives. One of our main activities was creating and supporting programmes that gave a voice and power to parents.”
Our question to you this week then, is just this: would you like the UK government to establish a scheme like David’s?
Researching Reform 
Anything to stop kids going into the overloaded care system where they stand a good chance of being abused has to be a good thing.
American research has long advocated kids were better off staying at home than going into care but the UK has been dismissive, stating their models won’t work in the UK. What drivel!
It’s about time kids already in care were reassessed to go home too.
If the powers that be were truely interested in what was best for kids they would be trialling different methods. Previously trialed methods in the UK have shown that social workers who worked with families were successful, so why isn’t keeping families together implemented across the UK?
LikeLike
Dana their making too much money out of children in care to return them to there family … they are only seen as bloodstock judges have no interest in the outcomes for stolen children/stolen lives its heart breaking, judges also must know children are more at risk in care on every level.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
LikeLike
My daughter is a therapist. She has been working with a fourteen-year-old who has been fostered by the same family for almost eighteen difficult months. Just as she thought they were making progress, the foster parents have concluded they cannot continue.
Once again, a child with horrendous problems, is going to feel betrayed. During her short life she has never met an adult she can trust or relate to for any length of time.
It’s no good social services taking her to what looks like a perfect home and foster-parents if she has nothing and no one to relate it to, or with. So far, it’s been one disaster after another; no stability and no one getting close to understanding or empathising with the child herself – with the exception of her therapist.
If there is any hope of avoiding the chain-gang effect of social care and fostering, I’m all in favour. If, through such a programme, some dysfunctional families may be able to turn their lives, and those of their children around, it has to be better than youngsters going into a not-fit-for-purpose care system.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The trouble is payment for fostering is lucrative and will attract those interested in the pay rather than the child. I have heard accounts of foster carers being able to pay for their mortgages or buy second homes abroad on what they get. They have all sorts of allowances, freebies, discounts on top of that. The average family has to live on a quarter (if they are lucky) of what foster carers earn. Foster carers in Ireland have been on record admitting they would not be interested unless they were getting paid and paid well! Take away the money and see how many will continue. Use the money to keep families together.
LikeLike
So true what you have written and as I have been made aware by the help line and others yes many foster carers are buying property abroad take the kids and them selves for holidays and charge the SS for the rent of their what ever property they have brought. Bloody amazing that via the help line the truth ROLLS IN, and we know the money rolls in FOR THE SS COURT EXPERTS AND MOSTLEY THEM WHO SET THE LAWS (IN A CHILD’S BEST INTEREST) and leave the children screaming to be heard,
LikeLike