Fostering, Adoption and Adult Placement Service improvements continue

Progress continues to be made on improvements to the Fostering, Adoption and Adult Placement (Continuity Care) Services in Orkney.

The Care Inspectorate published inspection reports into the Council-run services on 29 November 2022 highlighting a number of areas of concern.

Chief Officer, Orkney Health and Social Care Partnership, Stephen Brown, said: “An improvement plan was developed, addressing all the requirements and improvement areas identified, and accepted by the Lead Inspector of the Care Inspectorate on 12 December 2022. It was agreed that, despite an initial 30 December 2022 timeframe requirement, that they will seek a detailed action plan on delivering the improvements within three to six months.

“We remain wholly committed to addressing the outstanding areas and ensuring the services are as they should be in their entirety.

“We had already begun implementing a number of key actions ahead of the inspections such as the recruitment of an interim service manager who has taken forward the improvement plan.

“An additional social worker joins the Fostering and Adoption Team this month and a training programme for foster carers began last year.

“We must remember that at the heart of this is a chronic shortage of permanent staff locally and nationally leading to certain aspects of the services not being provided - an issue previously highlighted to both the Scottish Government and the Care Inspectorate by the Interim Chief Executive of the Council, John Mundell.

“While the findings are deeply concerning, there were also many positives from across all services such as children experiencing nurturing and meaningful relationships with their adoptive families. Adopters had positive relationships with supervising social workers. Young people living with caregiver families experienced affectionate and meaningful care. Staff formed genuine relationships with carers. They were skilled in helping to resolve challenging situations and in the provision of specialist advice.”

Every effort is being made to recruit to the services, which remains key to improvements.

Mr Brown said: “We have developed a strategic partnership with the Open University to provide Social Work traineeships, building on people’s existing qualifications and plugging them in to the social work degree course as appropriate. In promoting this scheme just across the wider council initially, we generated over 20 expressions of interest and three members of staff will begin the course in February with the potential to qualify in 18-24 months.

“Longer term, this approach will help grow and stabilise the workforce but the challenge of sustaining the service until these measures bear fruit presents a high level of risk.

“A wider recruitment campaign is being planned and will get underway soon.”

A report will be presented to the Policy and Resources Committee during February when Councillors will scrutinise the findings and action plans in order to ensure that improvements continue to be made.