New effort to listen to young people in care

Saturday 23 February 2019

A Young People’s Panel has recently been formed by the Family Placement Service to give those in foster care a voice in the process of recruiting their carers.

The Family Placement Service says the idea fulfils a key aim of the Children and Young People’s Plan to “listen to the voices of all children and young people.”

The Panels are widely used in the UK, and enable young people in foster care to have a voice and be part of the process when individuals apply to become foster carers or social workers. 

The Panel provides them with a voice and the report of their views on those wishing to foster is then considered by the Fostering and Adoption Panel. 

Senior Supervising Social Worker Lyn Gibbins said: “Listening to the voices of children and young people in care is extremely important and the Young People Panel was designed to ensure that young people in foster care in Guernsey are heard in an area which has a significant effect on their life.  We have held a training day, where the young people attending showed insight into their needs and suggested specifications for a foster carer. 

“Staff delivering the training were very impressed with how seriously the young people took the process and how thoughtfully the young people approached the course. This was then observed in the first Young People Panel day where they interviewed prospective foster carers.  Feedback from the carers being interviewed and the Fostering and Adoption Panel regarding the report presented by the young people was very positive. The young people enjoyed their Panel and received a certificate and voucher in recognition of them giving up their time to attend.”

The Family Placement Service are looking to recruit foster carers to the many different types of fostering provision. 

Being caring, non-judgemental, firm and fun but fair, not to be embarrassed to be seen with us, love, treating everyone the same and making them feel safe were a few of the qualities the children have said they would like in their foster carers. 

If you identify with the specifications the young people have come up with and are interested in knowing more about fostering please contact; the Family Placement Service on 01481 713230 or at HSC.FamilyPlacementServiceDuty@gov.gg.