The Lioncare Group has one aim: To improve the lives and prospects of the children in our care.
We firmly believe in the importance to children of a sense of continuum in the care and support they receive. Our extensive experience of caring for children has shown us the potential harm that can occur through poor planning and misinformed decision-making around the ending of placements.
The current financial and economic pressures on local authorities to make cost-efficiency savings raise serious implications for the level of consideration that will be given to the benefit of outreach and aftercare support provided by the adults who have been caring for the child and with whom the child has established a trusting working relationship.
The Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 Guidance and Regulations states:
“These other agencies will include those who are caring for young people, who might be encouraged to assume responsibility for preparing the young people they are caring for, for the time when they leave care (voluntary organisations and children’s homes do, of course, have a duty to do this). Local authorities will also wish to encourage them to provide aftercare for young people who have left their care.”
We offer every child leaving our care the necessary ongoing support and assistance to enable them to successfully move to their next placement, or leave the care system, and be able to look back and view their stay with us as a positive, rewarding, meaningful, and integrated stage of their journey through childhood to adolescence and into adulthood. We aim to support the child during the transition period between placements and beyond, through close co-operation and liaison between their current carers and their allocated key worker.
Indeed, The Lioncare Group has for many years provided planned and structured programs of outreach and aftercare to many children who have moved on from our care. The program initially allows for twice weekly visits to the child by the registered manager or the child’s casework manager, to assist them through the transition period between placements, maintain the continuity of important attachments the child has formed whilst in our care, and support them in establishing positive relations with their new carers.
Similarly, the registered manager meets with the new carers to offer support, guidance and practical advice where requested on ways to best care for the child, strategies that have previously proven effective, help in gaining an understanding or awareness of the emotional factors underlying aspects of the child’s behaviour or actions, and opportunities for sharing with the new carers aspects of the child’s developmental history and memorable experiences allowing the new carers to take responsibility for ‘keeping these real’ for the child.
The transition program can last for between 6-12 weeks depending on the wishes of the child, the placing authority, the new carers or support provider, and the foster support team or semi-supported care / 18+ team. The frequency of outreach visits decreases in a planned way throughout the programme and often finishes with a celebratory meal or activity for the child that marks the formal ending and ‘handover’ of their outreach care by adults from The Lioncare Group, and celebrates the start of their new life with their foster family or support provider.
Hillfields has developed a comprehensive programme of outreach and aftercare for young people leaving the care system and moving to semi-independent (or rather, Interdependent) living in their community.
