CONTACT FOR CHILDREN LOOKED AFTER IN THE LONDON BOROUGH OF LAMBETH Background This brief is to provide courts with guidance to the London Borough of Lambeth s position of contact for children looked after. Children for whom the Lambeth acts as corporate parent require contact with their birth parents, siblings and other family members in line with the Council s statutory duty. In many circumstances it is necessary that this contact is supervised during the initial interim stages and may continue until proceedings are concluded. Courts are rightly mindful of the rights of parents when ordering contact and the need to balance these rights with the best interests of the child is understood by Lambeth. Recent reports of Polly Baynes (2010) i and John Triseliotis (2010) ii articulate that contact is a difficult and highly emotive experience for both children and parents during the initial period of care proceedings and there are no easy or definitive answers that balances the needs of both parents and children in setting interim contact arrangements. Generally, the benefits of contact with a birth parent are seen as: building and maintaining attachments; reality testing; maintaining links with the extended family; promoting religious, cultural and ethnic identity; and providing an opportunity for assessing the parent/child relationship. (Baynes, p37, 2010) It is also recognised that after very young children or babies are accommodated and placed in foster care, their main closeness will likely begin to be developed with their foster carers. As a result, any relationship developed with the birth parent(s) will rely on continued contact and its quality but recognition that this may not be sustained at the level if there was no interruption in the main care giver. Although high levels of interim contact are frequently regarded as a prerequisite to successful rehabilitation, although no causal association has been established (Taplin 2005), a balance and reasonableness of the parental, child and foster families needs should be considered. 1
Role and Function of Contact provided by Lambeth s Children s Specialist Services Most children recently placed in care have an urgent need to see their birth parents quickly and regularly. Newly looked-after children also need time to play, rest and to get to know new carers. Social workers will devise care plans that balance these demands and hopefully be supported by parents. Baynes (2010) argues whilst any contact can be emotive, interim contact is particularly charged with anxiety, as the question of the child s possible return home hangs over the visits and parents are acutely conscious that their behaviour is being judged. The Family Rights Group iii state contact must be reasonable which is agreed between the local authority and the parents, or where there is no such agreement, contact which is objectively reasonable unless a court order for contact is in force. Lambeth will provide reasonable contact initially in the foster carers home where reasonable practical and safe. Where this is not possible contact will be provided in a commissioned contact centre or provision either supervised by contracted contact supervisors or unsupervised where agreed Children and Parents Views For most children who are placed in foster care, maintaining links with their families is very important. For this reason regular visits are arranged with children's parents, brothers and sisters or other family members. Maintaining this contact is particularly important in those cases where, if the intention is for a child to return home, they need to keep up their relationships with their family, but may be reduced where to reflect that the care plan is not rehabilitation. Wilson and Sinclair (2004) found, in their study of 596 foster children, that maintaining a pattern of visiting when there was no plan for the child to return home did not increase the probability of returning home. They argued that more frequent contact is more important where plans exist to return home but does not on its own make return more likely. The visits themselves are associated with return home. It is not at all clear that they cause it (Wilson & Sinclair, 2004:170). http://www.community.nsw.gov.au/docswr/_assets/main/documents/research_good_contact. pdf Children will usually want to see their parents, other members of their family and family friends. However, children may be unwilling to see certain family members and may be distressed at the prospect. The social worker, with the help of the child s carers, will attempt to understand the source of these feelings. They may arise from factors which can be changed or which the child can be helped to understand. 2
Lambeth recognise parents can often have confused feelings around contact. Many birth parents want to have contact but also find the experience stressful because they often feel powerless in their relationship with and frustrated due to the requirement for formal arrangements such as set times, venues, length of visits and if the contact is supervised. Lambeth through clear planning will ensure that these issues are addressed in a fair and sensitive way. One of the assumptions about the importance of maintaining attachments while children are in out of-home care is that the development of relationships with the foster parent will interfere with the attachment to the birth parent(s). However there is evidence that children can form multiple attachments and that these can enrich each relationship. Kelly and Lamb (2003) describe how attachments to both parents are formed at around the same age, around six to seven months, irrespective of how much time each spends with the child. The child may well develop a hierarchy of attachment figures, depending on the responsiveness of the caregiver... The issue of attachment in relation to children in care is therefore a complex one: it cannot be assumed that the maintenance of attachments is a sufficient reason to encourage frequent contact between all children in care and their birth parents. In fact, it could be argued that the maintenance of a dysfunctional attachment impedes the establishment of more functional relationships. (Dr Stephanie Taplin, 2005) Is all contact between children in care and their birth parents good contact? Foster Care Dynamics There has been evidence in Lambeth from foster carers and their supervising social workers that very high contact of over 5 days a week has prevented some foster carers committing to facilitating contact in their own home and a contact centre has been used with the added complexity of changing supervisors and travel for very young children and babies. Contact at 6 or 7 days a week is hampering fosters carers to balance the establishment of household routines, for the child and themselves with other often family and other foster children commitments. Research for Coram by Jenny Kenrick, at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, found frequent contact with birth parents disrupted babies' routines. The study, which examined the impact of contact on babies under 10 months, also found that they became distressed when separated from their carers. As a result, Coram is calling on family courts and local authorities to take a "flexible" approach to the frequency and timing of contact. We are committed to the importance of supporting and maintaining continuing contact for babies and their birth families during care proceedings. In the light of this research we believe courts and local authorities should re-evaluate the impact this may have on emotionally fragile babies that need stability," said 3
Jeanne Kaniuk, head of adoption at Coram. http://www.communitycare.co.uk/articles/2009/11/02/113040/concurrent-planning-birthparent-contact-can-distress-babies.htm Achieving the best possible contact arrangements for children is complex. It involves careful consideration of their particular needs, their safety, their wishes, legal proceedings, the balancing of any conflicts of interest between parents or between siblings, the views of parents or others with parental responsibility, the long term plan for the child, their age and the assessments of social workers and children s Guardians. Foster carers are in the front line where contact is concerned. They are the people with whom the children live; they have a key role in preparing the child for meetings with family members and in helping them to process their experiences afterwards. Yet foster carers have told us they are particularly concerned about three aspects of contact: How best to supervise contact within the context of assessments for legal proceedings, How best to facilitate their fostered children s contact over the longer term and The expected frequency of high levels of contact. We do provide foster carer training on contact and will continue to do so and we seek to have an evidence based approach to managing and recommending the level and frequency of contact and hope that this brief assists the court in this process. Lambeth Future Position on Contact Contact will vary depending on the age and circumstances of the individual child and Lambeth propose to implement the following structure for supporting and facilitating contact to meeting this balance: a) For babies, contact provides parents with an opportunity to develop their confidence and skills in direct care of the child; and Lambeth propose to provide direct contact at a maximum of 5 days per week, 3 hours a day to enable both parental input with the needs of foster carers to meet all of the children s needs. b) For children aged over 4 (statutory school age) who have been cared for by their parent before coming into care, contact is one crucial method in maintaining the emotional bond between child and parent; although it is recognised that the primary relationships can be shared between birth parents and foster carers whilst a child remains looked after Lambeth will seek to provide contact at a maximum of 3 days per week, 2 hours a day, to enable school routines, parental engagement and foster carers routines to be balanced. 4
c) Contact provides the Council with an important opportunity to observe the children interacting with members of their birth family and thus can assist in developing a full assessment of the child s relationships as a basis for sound care planning; and supervision reports are crucial to ensuring that faire and appropriate observations are taken. d) Properly organised supervised contact provides a safe structure within which children can spend quality time with their parents and other family members, when there may be significant risk factors such as mental illness, substance misuse, erratic behaviour, domestic violence, however if the child s welfare is genuinely paramount, we need to be more willing to amend contact arrangements whilst proceedings are ongoing (Baynes, 2010) and ensure that regular reviews are built into contact provision. Following feedback from foster carers Lambeth propose to limit contact provision from Monday to Saturday for the most part, (although Sunday contact will be available where parental contact is severely restricted during the week due to other commitments, such as work) All contact process agreed at court will be implemented through Lambeth s existing contact procedures where review and planning for contact is further outlined. Future research and guidance in contact for children looked after in foster care: The Dulverton Trust, an independent charity, has funded the Fostering Network to undertake a project to improve practice in relation to supporting contact arrangements for children and young people in foster care. This project will conclude in May 2011 and will provide additional guidance to Lambeth s practice. References: Family Rights Group Article 14: Contact with children in the care of the local authority http://www.frg.org.uk/pdfs/14.%20contact%20for%20children%20in%20care.pdf The Child Placement Handbook: Research, Policy and Practice, Gillian Schofield, and John Simmonds 2009 London, British Association of Adoption and Fostering, Neil. E. and Howe. D. (2004) Contact in Adoption and Permanent Foster Care. London: BAAF 5
John Triseliotis, ADOPTION & FOSTERING VOLUME 34 NUMBER 3 2010 Polly Banes SEEN AND HEARD VOLUME 20 ISSUE 4 2010 Taplin S (2005) Is All Contact between Children in Care and their Birth Parents Good Contact? Research Report, New South Wales Department of Community Resources (available at www.community.nsw.gov.au) The Fostering Network http://www.fostering.net/ i Polly Banes SEEN AND HEARD VOLUME 20 ISSUE 4 2010 ii Contact between looked after children and their parents A level playing field? ADOPTION & FOSTERING VOLUME 34 NUMBER 3 2010 iii http://www.frg.org.uk/pdfs/14.%20contact%20for%20children%20in%20care.pdf 6