Children Looked After away from Home

Explaining the 'Looking After Children System'.

For:

• Children living in a children's home
• Children living with foster carers
• Children living at home on a care order

When children are looked after by Children's Services we want to:

• Work with families and children to make sure they receive the best care possible.
• Ensure that families and others responsible for each child's welfare work together.

To do this we use the 'Looking After Children System' forms which are used by most Children's Service Departments.

The forms are:

• An information record - holding all personal information about children such as their health and education history. The reason for this is so that foster carers or residential staff have the information that is essential to best care for each child.
• A placement plan - which is an agreement about where children will be living. It covers areas such as who can have contact with each child; consent for medical treatment if necessary; dietary needs and which school is attended; and any other health needs.
• Care Plan - contains plans for children's future and what needs to be done by whom, in order that the plan can be achieved.
• Review form - used at reviews which are regular meetings which talk about the plans for children and how they are working out.
• Assessment and action records - contain questions about the important areas of children's lives at different stages including: health; education; development; identifying social relationships and self-care skills. These show what has been done and also identifies what work is still to be done.

Related Documents

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