Learning Outcomes
- Align activities with the Indigo Fostering Code of Ethics
- Uphold ethical standards across situations
Care Planning
Care planning processes involve extensive discussions, alignment building and consensus creation between multiple stakeholders including the foster agency, local authorities, legal advocacy groups and the carers themselves - all directed towards an ethical commitment of prioritising child welfare centric decision making.
Aspects care plans seek to address include:
- Educational development plans sculpting the learning journey across academic, vocational, extra-curricular pursuits
- Health intervention roadmaps scheduling medical, physiological and emotional support measures through developmental years
- Social integration initiatives encouraging community, familial and peer network participation to combat isolation
- Life skills & training calendars getting children ready to apply practical literacy as future independent adults
Care plans set out the month-to-month blueprints for how a child will be supported across personal development, education, skills training, healthcare interventions, family contact and transitions e.g. to live independently – all requiring a degree of coordinated action between foster agencies, local authorities and delivery partners.
Value Conflicts
Designing comprehensive care plans demands reconciling input from varied sources (e.g. social workers, psychologists, health workers, conflicting interests from family members) as well as factoring practical constraints around resource availability. Biases and even professional worker changes can inadvertently impact proposed interventions. As often the most consistent presence in a child’s life, foster carers can and should comment in a factual way on a child’s plan to encourage positive adaptations.
Child-Centric Decision Making
Many considerations compete for priority while constraints around resource availability further complicate planning. By upholding principles of equality, cultural sensitivity, skills development and positive identity shaping, foster careers play crucial roles in safeguarding children’s interests.
Course Corrections
While care plans should reflect best intent and the information available initially, continuous monitoring against milestones, changed contexts or revised projections based on new assessment findings warrant planned course corrections to keep child interests central and uncompromised.
Building Relationships
As consistent adult figures in the lives of children facing emotional turmoil from familial disruptions, foster carers carry the responsibility of being inclusive support figures that children can rely upon through difficult phases in their lives.
Communication
Respectful and empathetic communication establishes safe emotional spaces for children. From active listening focused conversations to discussions conveying reassurances navigating challenging interactions, dialogue is fundamental for trust. Eliminating inherent prejudice enables progress.
For children hesitant to open up immediately, creative mediums like journals, arts, music, stories or roleplays can allow safer vulnerability. Eventually, even small talks during meals or walks nurture connection. Patience and compassion are vital.
Culture and Identity
Understanding cultural details important to foster children like religious traditions, language, food, attire, and accommodating their specific needs allows a child to cultivate a positive cultural identity.
Professional Boundaries
Foster carer relationships with children necessitate clear boundaries pertaining to appropriate physical contact, communication, routine, shared living spaces and being vigilant against potential conflicts of interest or power struggles which may compromise the foster carer – looked after child relationship.
Healthy interpersonal foundations enable fulfilling the ideals engrained in foster carers’ ethical responsibilities around human rights, diversity and mutual respect.
Child Development
Fulfilling the role of ethical caregivers committed to enabling the full potential of children necessitates understanding the multidimensional facets shaping development spanning across health, behavioural, educational and psychological areas through the foundational as well as adolescent years.
This requires reconciling input from professionals and health experts prescribing lifestyle or therapeutic interventions tailored to the child.
Holistic Wellbeing
Truly nurturing child development ethically warrants analysing each suggested input through the lens of whether recommendations sufficiently take into account the context shaping the child rather than arising out of convenience or reflex judgement calls. It also entails proactively seeking courses of action that promote enriched quality of life rather than just ‘box ticking’.
Safeguarding children’s evolving personal identities and emerging preferences demands patient dialogue, joint solutioning mindsets and continuous two-way feedback, building an atmosphere of trust where a child feels safe coming into their own within rather than non-consensually feeling rushed through time-bound outputs.
Development as Self-Actualisation
Upholding ethical standards entails foster careers consciously and continuously considering whether care remains sufficiently centred around children’s long-term self-actualisation through formative years rather than bureaucratic accomplishment check-listing. This child-first commitment is an evaluation criterion separating conscientious foster carers from ‘process players’.
Education & Employment
The duty of foster carers regarding enabling children to build capabilities allowing future independence manifests concretely in the domain of education and employment.
Securing learning continuity, maintaining scholastic ambitions and laying foundations for career prospects requires concerted efforts in the foster care context which may comprise of disrupted environments.
Learning Opportunities
Obtaining timely educational needs assessments ensuring special support and customised pedagogic (learning) techniques are adequately factored into individualised education programs becomes imperative.
Enrichment activities and hobby workshops also harness children’s talents, strengths and interests. Structured play sessions encourage team collaborations while creative arts therapy channels emotional outlets positively.
Employment Enablement
Supporting employment entails working with updated plans which reflect a young person’s career interests, strengths etc. Skill development initiatives like cv support, work should be supported and tailored.
Overall Employability
The mark of foster carers getting the employment enablement aspect right includes children internally driven by aspirational visions for fulfilling futures - exercising informed career choices leveraging developed talents rather than constrained by fears or barriers that ethically never should have been limitations in an enlightened, opportunity-egalitarian society.
Exceptional Circumstances
Whilst the focus is upon promoting child rights, welfare and development, the complex situational mix of psychological stresses, deep-rooted traumas and close quarter living dynamics provide scope for exceptional circumstances like safeguarding missteps, standards of care shortcomings, behavioural escalations or allegations.
Safeguarding Vigilance
Preventative risk mitigation occupies top priority, with carers remaining continuously vigilant to signs indicating threats to child safety across domains like emotional, physical, sexual abuses, or risks triggered by other factors such as bullying. A sign might be a change in behaviour or evidence of self-harm.
Allegations Management
False allegations may arise as misconstrued misunderstandings amidst troubled children. However, objective assessments following established reporting protocols factors into investigation findings. Due process focused on ascertaining facts upholds ethical equitability. Support for carers subject to complaints or allegations remains objective of any investigation.
Restoration
Genuine accountability where mistaken attributions (in some cases) warrant restorative mediations/conversations/reflective practice, enabling affected individuals to make peace through constructive dialogue that brings issues to closure. This upholds ethical ideals around fairness, respect and taking responsibilities for one’s actions.
Recording & Reporting
Record keeping and truthful reporting constitutes fundamental ethical obligations for foster carers and is also a matter of regulatory compliance.
Secure Records Management
Extensive child data accumulation necessitates records storage through access-controlled systems only. Confidential discussions occur in privacy protected settings.
Transparent Communications
Reporting to local authorities requires factual accuracy free from positive or negative subjective biases that may dilute evidence-based conveyance about significant child developments, pertinent for streamlined support orchestration across education, healthcare, housing, legal aid and others.
Continuous Improvement Integration
Regular reviews will be undertaken by the agency to assess reporting mechanisms (content, quality, data security) and compliance.