CONTACT - WHAT DO WE THINK?

This comment was added today by a new reader:

"I have just discovered your blog and am so pleased. I have thought about doing it myself but with 3 kids all very young in placement plus my own teenager the time is never there! I have tried really hard to get contact stopped for my little ones as the family brutally abused in every way and the psychological trauma is reawakened esp for one child in a dramatic fashion. The Guardian felt 'the children enjoy contact' having observed one session... I despaired although many months later it is being reduced. I will read all the other posts when time permits"
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Firstly, thank you for finding a moment to add your comment. I totally agree about how hard it is to find time for anything outside the bubble of our own placements, our family, and ourselves.

Also, I totally sympathise with your general concerns about Contact. 

Talking to other foster carers, I find an almost universal frustration that Contact could be so much more valuable than it currently is.

My sympathies also go out to the professionals who are required to uphold the 1989 Law, which quite rightly, made reunification the priority, and states, as I understand it:

• The Act imposes a new duty to promote contact between a child being looked after and those with whom he or she has a significant relationship.

However it also stipulates:

• Contact must also be offered in accordance with children's developmental needs and take account of their wishes and feelings.
• The aims for contact should be clearly identified and integrated into the care plan. Contact aims should have clearly stated and measurable objectives that identify:

1. the identity of visitors and the timing, frequency and venue for contact;
2. the arrangements for indirect contact;
3. the carer's role in contact
4. the social worker's role - in supporting parents, carers and child, and;
5. the services required to support the contact plan.

Research shows that the following factors are key to successful reunification;

1. a good attachment between parents and child
2. a well motivated parent who is willing to change and seek help
3. purposeful contact aimed at improving the parent-child relationship
4. contact that is a positive experience, with the child responding well to increased contact

Here's what I think has gone slightly wrong with a perfectly well intentioned initiative: people have got their heads around the bits that are clear and easy to validate. So contact happens, because it must. The time and place and the names of the visitors, you can write it up easy using names, places and numbers. The bits that are hard to validate and quantify have been a bit ignored. How do you "measure" the carer's role? Or children's wishes and feelings? You have to use language and personal judgement; "He got very, sort of, angry, well, livid really, for about an hour and then again for oooh, about another hour, at bedtime, and I think it was because he remembered all the things his parents did to him."  This can never be as unequivocal as recording "Contact took place between child BS, his mother HS, from 4.00pm to 5.00pm on Thursday 22nd, at McDonald's, supervised by Ms PH"

As for "a well motivated parent who is willing to change and seek help", well, shall we come back to that one another day?

Above all; there is a bit of the Act that's missing, and it's the bit that the comment above is partly referring to. Namely, the impact of Contact on the foster home. I couldn't find a single reference to it in the Act. Maybe I need to try harder or something, but as far as I can see, there is no provision for balancing the child's needs, and the priority of reunification against the toll that Contact takes on the people without whom there would be no system; you and me. Oh, and our other halves, our children and friends ("you're looking a bit rough lately"). And, just for the record, my dog, who is still on sedatives.

My own suggestions  to make Contact more valuable are as follows:

At Blue Sky we have a directive to record the impact of Contact on the child. Foster Carers must lay it out, on the line.

We should record the wider impact of the child's reaction on the foster home.

Foster carers should get clear guidelines from Local Authority Social Workers on how Contact is aimed at working towards the child's successful outcome.

We carers should press that the parents are receiving support and guidance in how to achieve reunification, and above all, how they behave at Contact. The parents  should be supportive of the fostering, recognise they got things wrong: maybe apologise to the child for the things that have gone wrong, things they did wrong.

One Foster Carer said to me "Contact? I feel like I'm just a taxi driver, to be honest."

Yeah, but then afterwards, what? 

A firefighter.

The Secret Foster Carer