The official version of this document can be found via the PDF button.
The below content has been automatically generated from the original PDF and some formatting may have been lost, therefore it should not be relied upon to extract citations or propose amendments.
Care of Children in Jersey Review Panel Written Submission
Jersey Association for Family Therapy
Jersey Association for Family Therapy, thanks the Care of Children Review Panel for the opportunity to express their views.
It is noted in Recommendation 4 that the proposal is to establish an accredited training programme for front line social work staff in systemic practice by January 2018. JAFT has been providing systemic training for practitioners working with families through workshops for the past twenty years and are currently in negotiation with the Tavistock-and-Portman NHS Trust to provide an accredited training course on the island. This would comprise a two years part time training, led by academic staff from the Tavistock. Candidates would qualify as systemic practitioners, and could if they wished continue with an MSc programme in London at The Tavistock. We feel it is important to highlight this in view of the recommendations. Recommendation 1 references working with Guernsey and this training presents an opportunity to include Guernsey students.
It is noted in 12.3 Effective Corporate Parenting that no reference is made to the involvement of families, which is concerning as research suggest that many children in care go on to return to their families. It is important that removal into care is not seen as punitive but as part of a complex change programme where families are supported to welcome their children back (when appropriate) into a safe secure home. Overall we are concerned with the potential for these recommendations to inadvertently return to unhelpful child parent binaries when all the evidence suggest we need to be approaching all child concerns in the context of family. Lack of reference to parents /families is in keeping with global and local recent research which recommended a need for parent advocacy service. If we want to keep children safe and secure we need to build strong respectful relationships with parents/carers. Para 13.38 p. 62 – reference is made to a lack of interagency working and we believe that some of this problem resides in a lack of inter-agency or cross agency training For front line professionals including Health Visitors, Social workers and family support workers – we are hopeful that the prospect of inter-agency systemic training could begin to address this.
Jane Pointon MSc ( Family Therapy) Chairwoman JAFT
Patricia Tumelty MSc ( Family Therapy) Deputy Chairwoman JAFT