In 2015, there was a growing awareness in South Lanarkshire Council’s Adoption and Fostering Team of delays around permanence decisions for children. One area of focus was permanency for babies and very young children whose parents were already known to the local authority and were experiencing several significant challenges at the same time. To help address these challenges and the impact they had for both children and families, it was decided that the new approach would target parents who dealing with a specific set of circumstances: the parents already had a child or children in care and now had another child under the age of two or were pregnant,  the child or newborn weren’t able to live at home safely due to factors like substance misuse or criminality, and there wasn’t a suitable kinship carer to take on caring responsibilities.

In these situations, the child was typically cared for by a foster carer while their parents underwent a parenting assessment by South Lanarkshire’s social work team. Once this assessment was complete, a decision was made about where the child would live. On some occasions, this meant returning to live at home with their parents. If this wasn’t possible, the child would usually go on to live with an adoptive family or, on some occasions, different foster carers.

Although both these outcomes could be positive overall, there were issues with the process that could create additional challenges for children and families. Often, when a child returned to live with their parents, they continued to experience uncertainty, instability, and moves between carers for months or years into the future due to the family not receiving tailored support. If a decision was made for the child to be adopted or continue to be fostered, this meant an additional move or series of moves in the earliest months and years of their lives. On some occasions, children who were adopted had brothers and sisters from the same parent(s) who also needed to be cared for elsewhere from birth. This could lead to additional challenges in maintaining relationships between siblings who at times lived in different places, with different, often multiple carers.

The team at South Lanarkshire knew that the process needed to change to ensure that children had a permanent home from the earliest age and as few moves between homes as possible. To get started on their journey, South Lanarkshire spoke to a Permanence Consultation from CELCIS to start to think about the new approach they could take. Above all, whatever approach was agreed on needed to better suit the needs and lives of children, whether they were able to return to live with their parent(s) or needed to be cared for elsewhere. It was also important that the children’s parents were able to get the help and support they needed to have the highest chance of their child being able to return to live with them permanently. The result was the development of two new initiatives.

For some children who need to live away from the family home from birth or at a very young age, adoption is identified as the best approach to a permanent, consistent home. Before the new approach in South Lanarkshire began, prospective adoptive parents would approach the local authority to begin the adoption process. Once approved as adopters, a child would usually be supported over time to move from foster care to their new home. However, this still involved an additional move for the child and the potential for delays in decision making. Wanting to ensure a more consistent and permanent living arrangement for children from the earliest age, South Lanarkshire introduced a ‘Foster to Adopt’ process for the babies and very young children involved in this new approach.

The Foster to Adopt process is when prospective adoptive parents are ‘dual approved’ as both a foster carer and an adoptive parent. This means that a child can be fostered and then adopted by the same family if it’s not safe to return to their parents, reducing the amount of uncertainty the child experiences and ensuring they are able to stay with the same carer(s) permanently. Until this decision is made, the Foster to Adopt carers, act like any other foster carer, attending the child’s ‘Looked After’ review meetings, and, where safe to do so, facilitating family time between the child and their parents while they are undergoing the parenting assessment.

Once the Foster to Adopt process was in place, South Lanarkshire started to incorporate information about this new opportunity into discussions with prospective adoptive parents. Being a Foster to Adopt carer is a very a personal choice, and South Lanarkshire recognised from the beginning that it wouldn’t be suitable for all prospective adopters. Foster to Adopt carers often need to look after newborn babies straight from hospital, where there is often a high degree of specialist care needed. They also need to be aware and prepared for the very real possibility that the child’s permanent home would be with their parents once the outcome of the parenting assessment was known. However, for prospective adopters who do decide to become Foster to Adopt carers, there are multiple benefits for children and families, and it can mean caring for a child permanently from their very earliest days:

As this new approach continued over time, it started to benefit not just the adoptive child, but also their siblings as some Foster to Adopt carers – now adoptive parents - decided to go through the process again and adopt the brother or sister of their adopted child. Although this isn’t a common circumstance, it has meant that, on some occasions, biological siblings are able to live and grow up together in the same home, with the same adoptive parents. This has a profound impact on their sense of identity and belonging, helping them to connect with their brothers and sisters whilst being raised in a safe, permanent, loving home.

While children are living with their Foster to Adopt carers, their parents undergo a parenting assessment designed to help them make meaningful changes to their lives with the aim of being able to take care of their children safely. Although at the end of the assessment some children were able to live with their parents, South Lanarkshire noticed that on a number of occasions, the family still encountered challenges at home as parents weren’t always getting the support they needed.

One of first things the team in South Lanarkshire changed was who the assessments were carried out by. Before the new approach was in place, these were carried out by social workers in a local office team. Although the assessments followed the criteria at the time, there were two key challenges: firstly, social workers who were juggling multiple priorities at the same time didn’t always have the time, resource, or space to work with parents who needed the highest level of support in the most effective way. This led to some parents feeling that the support they received wasn’t tailored to their circumstances. Furthermore, although the intention of social workers was to help families, some parents could find it difficult to trust and connect with those who had also been part of the decision making regarding their child moving to foster care.  

To combat the current challenge and incorporate a new approach to the parenting assessments, South Lanarkshire decided to create a new team - the Parenting Assessment and Capacity Team (PACT) – to sit independently to the local office team. The purpose of this team would be to focus solely on parenting assessments for parents for whom there were the most significant safeguarding concerns, offering tailored support away from other services that parents had already come into contact with. In addition, South Lanarkshire also incorporated more flexibility into the process; while most parenting assessments are 12 weeks long, in the new approach, they could be reduced to six weeks or extended to 16 or 24 weeks depending on the needs of the parents.

After beginning the new assessment approach, the team quickly noticed a significant change. Feedback from parents found that being supported by an entirely independent team during the assessment felt like a fresh start as was no preconceived view of them. Furthermore, the tailored support and focus that one dedicated team was able to provide gave them the chance to unpick, understand and reflect on the challenges they faced and the impact on their ability to care for their child in a non-judgemental, safe space. This included both structured group and individual sessions that were relevant to addressing these challenges, where parents learned about practical tasks and the emotional needs of an infant, such as making a bottle, whilst being supported to think about the systems that they need to have in place at home to care for their child:

Ten years since first connecting with CELCIS and establishing the new approach, the Foster to Adopt process and launch of the PACT team to carry out independent assessments for parents have had a profound impact for children and families facing the some of the greatest challenges in South Lanarkshire.

Decisions about where a child’s permanent home should be are now made in a far timelier manner and with less moves between carers – the original aim of the new approach – in addition to a number of wider benefits. Although outcomes can be different for every family, parents who go through the assessment report feeling more supported and well-equipped to care for their child safely and to address the challenges they face. For children who need to live elsewhere, they experience consistent care and adoptive families who have a much fuller understanding of their life story, or, in some cases, an opportunity to live together with brothers and sisters: