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What R they talking about? A list of words and phrases to help explain what people are talking about! Sometimes your worker or other people at meetings may use words that you don't understand - they shouldn't really do this but if they do they should ask you if you understand.
Accommodated: where a child or young person is being cared for by the Social Services with the agreement of the parents. Adoption: a child is placed with approved adoptive parents and a court makes an adoption order which places the child permanently with those parents and they carry full parental responsibility for the child. An adoption order, therefore, ends all legal ties between the child and their birth parent and the child/adopted person is treated in law as if they were the birth child of the adoptive parents. The child is able to have contact with their extended birth family if this is consistent with their needs and welfare. Adoption order: permanent Court Order conferring all parental responsibility for a child onto the adoptive parents so that the birth parents lose all their legal rights and responsibilities. Adoption and Children Act 2002: Legislation implemented on 31 December 2005 increasing the support available to adoptive parents. Assessment: in this context it is a process of examining and determining a child's developmental needs as well as the capacity of their parents/carers and their family and environment to meet these needs. It is a continuing process and is not separate from the delivery of services/treatment. Behaviour management plan: a plan for supporting positive behaviour, or dealing with challenging behavior in ways that will meet the needs of the child. It should be part of the care plan and the placement plan/information record. Care leavers: looked after children who have reached the age of 16 and whose situation falls into one of the following categories: Eligible – aged 16 or 17 and have been looked after for a period of 13 weeks since the age of 14 and remain looked after (planned periods of respite care do not count) Care Order: If the court decides that it would be best for you not to live at home, a care order will be made. This means that Social Services will be able to make decisions about important things in your life like where you live, go to school. South Tyneside MBC usually make these decisions with your parents and when you are old enough to understand they will make them with you. The Council must tell you about their plans for you. You should be given the chance to tell them what you would like to happen. Care plan: this determines why it is in the child's best interests to become looked after or whether other support services would be able to meet their needs; it identifies their assessed needs and the services to meet those needs, and sets the framework for the services provided to the child and family to enable the desired goals and outcomes to be achieved. Care planning process: the way in which decisions are made, and reviewed, about how looked after children are cared for. This includes things like where they live, contact with family, school, health, legal issues, money and other activities. This is in four stages:
It includes the court care planning process where the court decides the final care plan for the child, which social services is then responsible for implementing. Child in care: see looked after child. Children's guardian: a person from the court who works to ensure the child's views and best interests are provided to the court in Care or other Legal Proceedings. May also be referred to as 'guardian' and previously known as a 'guardian ad Litem'. Children's home: (sometimes called a children's residential care home) a home for children who are not living with their family or foster carers. Children are looked after by staff of the home. A children's home can also be a specialist home for children receiving therapeutic support or for disabled children. Children's rights service: a service in local authorities that gives independent advice and support to looked after children. (It may have a different name, depending on the authority.) In South Tyneside we do not have a specific Children’s Rights Service – but if you have a particular question or need advice about your rights you can speak to the Service Development Team on 0191 424 4633. Children's services authority: see local authority. Communication plan: sets out a child's preferred way of communicating with other people (very important if a child has a communication difficulty, or does not use fluent spoken English/Welsh as their first language). These are also called Communication Passports. Complaints service: a service in the authority/agency which deals with any complaint that children or their family may have about being looked after. Staff will listen and help sort out the problem. Concurrent plan: the child is placed with foster carers who are dually approved as foster carers and adoptive parents, and who, if the birth family cannot parent, become the adopters. Consultation: an opportunity for children and young people, and their family, to talk to adults about what they think of a service, what they would like to be provided. Consultation form and contributions form: a form on paper or on computer that children, their parents and their carers are given before a review. It asks them to provide details about how everything is going, and their opinions, wishes and feelings about what should happen. In South Tyneside children and young people can also complete Viewpoint. Contact: After an order is made by the court it may think about how and who you will be able to keep in touch with such as your parents, brothers and sisters, friends and relatives, this is called contact. Contact can be regular visits, letters, phonecalls, cards or visits that are not that frequent. Contact plan: this is part of the overall care plan and details the contact arrangements for each individual child with members of their family or friends. Contingency plan: the plan which will replace the agreed care plan if that doesn’t work. Corporate parents: the whole council/elected members are 'corporate parents' to all the children who are looked after by that authority/council. It does not only refer to the councillors with responsibility for social/children's services but all the members and services that play a part by accepting responsibility for children in their care, making their needs a priority and seeking the same outcomes any good parent would want for their own children. Designated doctor and designated nurse: Doctors or nurses who have responsibility for looked after children. This sometimes means they may see individual looked after children - for instance they might carry out health assessments. Designated teacher for looked after children: a role in a school, filled by a teacher who has an understanding of care and its impact on education. Each school should have appointed a teacher to this role. They must have sufficient authority to make things happen both for the individual child and across the school for looked after children in general. They act as an advocate for looked after children; ensure speedy transfer of information; ensure that each looked after child has a Personal Education Plan and that a home–school agreement is drawn up with the primary carer. Diversity: children and their families may present with very different and individual circumstances. Our task is to understand and work sensitively and knowledgeably with different and diverse needs to identify the particular issues for the child and their family. It does not mean all children are treated the same but that they have opportunities for access to services which meet their different needs. Emergency Protection order: An emergency protection order is made when you are in immediate danger and may have to be taken away from home quickly. This might be because someone has called the police if they are worried that you are being hurt, it could be because you have told someone like a teacher that you are being hurt, or you might already be in a safe place, like a hospital. Family group conference: an informal meeting with children and everyone who is important in the child's life – for example, parents, other family members and close friends – to talk about who within the family and friends network can help look after the child or provide other care or contact. Guardianship: this refers to a special guardianship order that will come into force on implementation of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. It will give the holder/carer parental responsibility without breaking the legal ties to the parents of the child. It will exist up to the age of 18. Health plan: states a child's health needs, and how they are to be met. It forms part of the care plan. Health professionals: people like doctors and nurses who work to make sure children are well and help their family to meet the child's needs. Independent Fostering Agency/Service (IFA/IFS): foster carers and a fostering service provided by a private, independent provider, not the local authority/children's service. Independent reviewing officer: the person who makes sure that children have reviews; that their views and wishes are heard as well as those of their family, those working with them and making plans for them; and checks that the child's assessed needs are being met, that their welfare is paramount, and their rights are not being breached. It is these officers that would normally chair your review meeting. Independent visitor: if children have had no contact with their family for a year, they can be provided with an independent visitor, subject to their wishes. They will visit the child, take him or her out, give advice and be a friend. Individual Education Plan: the plan for a young person, based on their statement of educational needs, which is reviewed at least annually. (See also Personal Education Plan) Intervention: services and resources provided for looked after children to meet the assessed needs, desired outcomes and plan for the child. Key worker: each child living in a children's home or residential special school should have one of these. A key worker is responsible, in the children's home, for ensuring that the work with the child and how they are cared for is consistent with the care plan and placement plan/information record. He or she is responsible for reporting to the review on the agreed work to meet the plan, and whether the outcomes have been achieved. Local authority: the (children's services) authority that is responsible for each looked after child, their care and their care plan. They are also called corporate parents. The terms Local authority/Social Services department/multi-agency have been used to include all the differing and changing structural arrangements at the time of developing this toolkit. Long-term fostering: a child is placed with a foster carer(s) and it is envisaged that the child will remain with them until they are 18 or older. The child is part of the foster carer's family but parental responsibilities will be shared (see parental responsibility). Looked after child/young person, or child/young person in care: a young person being looked after by the local authority. The term covers accommodated children and those who are in care under a Care Order/interim order. This can include: living with family or friends, in foster care, a children's home, residential school, special school or in supported lodgings. Minutes: a note of everything that has happened in a meeting including decisions made, with explanations for these, and disagreements. They are usually sent to all participants and to those for whom decisions may be being made or who may be affected by the decisions. Monitoring: this is an activity within the review process. Itmeans that someone is checking that outcomes are being achieved, that the right services are being provided, and includes processes to check whether needs are changing and require re-assessment. Multi-agency/multi-disciplinary/inter-agency: social/children's services carry the responsibility for the care plan but different agencies and professionals contribute to it, for example, the school, the GP, the looked after children's nurse, and adult services for the parent or for the young person as they approach adulthood. A range of professionals have a role in assessing a child's general well-being and development. Their responsibility is to provide more specialist assessment and to respond to needs by providing services in combination with social/children's services. It is not just social/children's services who are the assessors and providers of services. It is important that these services contribute to, and are involved in, the individual care planning process and the strategic development and commissioning of services to meet need. Out-of-authority placements: where a child is placed outside the geographical boundaries of the local authority/children's service responsible for them and they use services of another local authority/agency where partnership arrangements are not in place – for example, for education, health, leisure, housing. Outcomes: individually set objectives for each child which relate to each assessed need. They are aspirational, but set the objectives for the services engaged to meet those needs and are monitored and reviewed to ensure that they are attained. They can contribute to an agency's performance indicators/key thresholds. Parallel planning: see twin-track planning. Parental responsibility: the rights and power of parents to make decisions about a child. Where the child is looked after because of a Care Order, social services is given parental responsibility by the courts and this is shared with parents. Where a child is accommodated, parents retain parental responsibility. The child's welfare remains paramount in all decisions. Participation: taking part and having some influence over decisions and actions. Pathway plan: involves all the planning for leaving care for eligible young people from the age of 16. It builds on and replaces the care plan. Personal Adviser (PA): a person to support and plan for eligible young people from the age of 16 leaving care. Permanence: this is a framework providing children with a sense of security, continuity, commitment and identity – a sense of belonging for each child. The objective is to ensure children have a secure, stable and loving family to support them through childhood and beyond. This can be achieved through: a return to birth parents; placement with extended family; placement with a substitute family through adoption or long-term fostering supported by a residence order or guardianship. Permanence plan: this should be made at the 4-month review and should include one of the permanence options (above) along with a contingency/twin-track plan. Personal Education Plan (PEP): the assessment and plan to meet the educational needs of a child. It forms part of the care plan. Placement officer: A person from the local authority who finds the placement for the child which will best meet their needs (see also commissioning). Placement plan/placement information record: this takes forward the care plan into a written plan for a child's daily life in placement. It details how the child will be looked after, how his or her needs will be met by the home/carer. Planning: a continuing process, arising from the assessment, to ensure that services are in place to meet the assessed needs of the child. Public Care: see Looked after. Residence Order: This means that you will live somewhere other than at home. You might go to live with grandparents or some other relative, or a parent. Whoever you go to live with will then be responsible for you as long as the order is in place. They can make decisions about you like which school you should go to. Resilience: ability of children to respond to stress and adapt despite adversity; develop coping mechanisms; and succeed in some areas of life when they could easily fail. Review: See 'Review process' and 'Review meeting' Review process: a process of checking things out and monitoring of the care plan; making sure that the right services are in place, at the right time, to meet the required needs and outcomes. Review meeting: It is a meeting that is held every six months to talk about where you are living, your education, contact with your family, hobbies and interests. Risk assessment: a written document, which supports the care plan, that identifies hazards and any action necessary. Go to top Social services: a department of the local authority (also called the council, children's services authority) which supports and protects people. Special Educational Needs (SEN): needs or problems that get in the way of learning and need particular support that can lead to a Statement of SEN, which states what these needs are and how they will best be met. Statement of Purpose: details of a service that says how it will look after children, provide services for them and help them with their problems, including the aims and objectives, policies and procedures followed, facilities and services provided. Supervising social worker: a person who supervises and helps each foster care family. Supervision order: this usually means that you’ll live at home. A social worker or sometimes a probation officer will act as your supervisor, they will see you regularly and give you and help and advice that you might need. The order lasts for one year but it can be made longer. Transitional plan: for children with Special Educational Needs at age 14, that says what will happen in the last years at school and plans for college or employment. It feeds into the Individual Education Plan for all children with statements of educational need, the Personal Education Plan and the care plan for looked after children with statements of educational need. Twin-track planning: while the child is in foster care or residential accommodation, the parents and the extended family are being assessed at the same time as a care plan is being developed for placement outside the family. Youth offending team: the youth offending team aims to prevent children and young people committing crime. Young person in care or looked after young person: (see looked after child). -----
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