Supporting foster carers

Looked after children and young people can have significant challenging and risk-taking behaviour, threatening the stability of their placement.

These young people with complex needs require considerable resources to help support them. We can provide intensive support to foster carers and intensive ongoing work with the young people themselves.

We can help to manage services like MIST (Multi-disciplinary Intervention Service Torfaen), offering a 'wraparound' therapeutic service.

MIST supports carers in a variety of ways, including a 24-hour on-call service, ongoing advice and supervision, training and education. The service works therapeutically with the young people, utilising a variety of individual psychological therapies and activity-based inputs such as drama, music, art, as well as practical support, befriending and learning support. It works closely with all other professionals involved in each young person's care, through consultation, liaison and joint direct work.

The service has been externally evaluated and a report published (Moving into Maturity); it is perceived as providing a highly valued resource that is producing positive outcomes for children and young people.

Sometimes Local Authority Fostering services struggle to provide enough support to foster parents who are caring for very vulnerable children and young people. They may have been placed in a number of foster homes and possibly present challenging behaviour. An independent therapeutic support service provided by Action for Children may be able to provide this support without being identified with the Local Authority. This may be a valuable resource for Placement Services.

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