You can pick your friends...

...but you can't pick your social worker!*

The longer we foster and the more social workers we meet, the more grateful we become of our wonderful supervising social worker Jane. We were really fortunate that Jane was also the social worker who assessed us, so she has known us since we first did our "Skills to Foster" training and has been alongside us right through our fostering journey. She does everything in her power to make sure we feel listened to and supported. She's patiently sat through many a rant and has always managed to stay sympathetic - quite an achievement! Of course she's limited by the policies and budgets of the local authority, but we understand that and are able to separate her support of us from the "no" she unfortunately has to say quite often.

For a short term placement we don't have much say in the matter - duty phones us, we discuss the child's needs and details, and we make a decision. We don't usually speak to or meet the child's social worker until the child is placed. It's a lottery - we definitely drew the short straw with Jack-Jack's social worker but have been extremely blessed with Belle's. She gets back to us quickly, is on the ball with organising things that Belle needs, and it's clear that she genuinely cares about her.

For long term/permanency placements we're able to be much more discerning as there are (should be!) multiple conversations and meetings with the child's social worker before the child is placed. This is a person that we will potentially have to work with for the next 15 years so it's important that we feel that they're going to do basic things like reply to messages quickly, work with us to provide things that the child needs, and that they really care about the child achieving and progressing. As we are planning to specialise as disability carers this is even more important as the child's needs are greater, their social worker is not a specialist in their condition, and children with additional needs typically stay with their carers until they're 24 rather than 18, so the relationship with the social worker can be even longer!

Some social workers are a bit like salesmen. We met with one recently about a potential permanent placement who has a disability. He stayed for nearly two hours, and by the end of this we didn't know any more about the child than the basic details we had found out over the phone from Jane. The conversation was peppered with "she's a lovely child", "she's beautiful inside and out", and "people are drawn to her". Any detailed questions we asked about her condition and how it affects her day to day were deflected - he clearly didn't know and hadn't taken the time to find out from her current carers. We've decided not to pursue the placement for several reasons, but this was definitely taken into consideration which is sad for the child as it's nothing to do with them and could get in the way of a great match with the right carer.

*Of course as a carer if you don't get on with your social worker you can request a different one, and if a child's social worker isn't doing their job correctly there is a complaints process that the child, parent or carer can follow.