Caritas Adoption Support Service

Caritas Adoption Support Service Inspection report for adoption support agency

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Unique reference number SC411743 Inspection date 11/12/2014 Inspector Sharon Lloyd Type of inspection Full Provision subtype Adults and children

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Setting address Caritas Diocese of Salford, Cathedral Centre, 3 Ford Street, SALFORD, M3 6DP

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Telephone number 01618172250 Email g.moroney@caritassalford.org.uk Registered person Caritas Diocese of Salford Registered manager Rosaleen Teresa Griffin Responsible individual Mark Wiggin Date of last inspection 12/09/2011 Website: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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Brief description of the service

Caritas Diocese of Salford provides this small adoption support agency based in the North West of England. It is a charity managed by a board of trustees and is one of many services provided by Caritas. Other services are not the subject of this inspection.

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Brief description of the service

The adoption support team has five full time staff and four sessional workers who provide services to 120 children previously placed by Catholic Children's Rescue Society. It also provides services to adult adoptees and birth relatives who require adoption support. The agency provides support and counselling for birth parents where children have been placed for adoption on behalf of six local authorities.

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Brief description of the service

From April 2013- March 2014, the agency provided support, therapy and counselling services to 12 children and three adoptive parents; and provided birth records counselling to over 40 birth parents and families; and support, advice and intermediary services to 88 adult adoptees.

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The inspection judgements and what they mean

Outstanding : a service of exceptional quality that significantly exceeds minimum requirements Good : a service of high quality that exceeds minimum requirements Adequate : a service that only meets minimum requirements Inadequate : a service that does not meet minimum requirements

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Overall effectiveness

The overall effectiveness is judged to be outstanding .

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Overall effectiveness

The agency provides consistent, high quality support to children and adults affected by adoption. This ensures very positive outcomes for all service users, even in the most complex situations. It helps service users to cope with unavoidable disappointments with sensitivity and concern for their welfare.

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Overall effectiveness

Children enjoy stable placements with adoptive parents who receive good advice and support. Both parents and children receive effective counselling and therapeutic services from qualified and well trained staff. This helps them to understand their situation and reduce their anxieties.

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Overall effectiveness

Feedback from service users and other professionals is overwhelmingly positive. Both children and adults value the sensitive, caring approach of the staff team and recognise the hugely positive difference the agency's interventions make to the quality of their lives.

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Overall effectiveness

The agency has an accurate understanding of its strengths and weaknesses and takes effective steps to improve. It is well-led but has suffered from staff shortages resulting from the retirement of key personnel. Staff have worked hard to reduce the impact of these shortages and it is to their credit that they have continued to maintain a very good level of service. New staff are now in post.

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Overall effectiveness

The agency values a well trained work force and staff keep abreast of new developments, legal changes and research in the sector. They meet regularly with partner agencies and other providers and make valuable contributions to the development of new skills across a range of services. This enables the provision of an effective and constantly improving service.

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Overall effectiveness

The intended outcomes of individual pieces of work are not always clearly expressed although they are agreed with service users. While success is evident, recorded in case notes and understood by service users, it is not always recorded in a clear and succinct report that enables easy review and monitoring.

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Recommendations

To improve the quality and standards of care further the registered person should take account of the following recommendation(s):

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Recommendations

 ensure that records demonstrate that when deciding whether to provide a service or which service to provide, the agency considers the assessed needs, welfare, safety and wishes of the child and adults affected by adoption. (NMS 15)

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Outcomes for service users

Outcomes for young people are outstanding .

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Outcomes for service users

Children enjoy successful, stable adoptive placements. They form strong and lasting attachments with their adoptive families and benefit from having adoptive parents who know how to help them and who respond very effectively to their needs. Children enjoy a positive experience of family life.

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Outcomes for service users

There are very few adoption placement breakdowns. Children who have emotional and behavioural difficulties receive therapeutic support tailored to their individual needs and wishes. There is no or minimal delay in them obtaining a service which leads to the development of a deep sense of emotional security, increased resilience and a positive self-view. Those who receive therapeutic support benefit enormously from this intervention. For example, one young person said, 'It's really good. I'm more relaxed and confident and I don't worry all the time like I used to.' Children receiving adoption support achieve a strong sense of belonging and identity because they are well informed about their birth families. They have a very good understanding of their personal histories and the reasons for their adoption. They benefit from letter box contact with birth families including siblings and grandparents, where appropriate.

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Outcomes for service users

Children significantly improve their engagement with education resulting in excellent attendance and achievement at school. Many exceed their predicted grades and go on to further and higher education, including university. They have solid foundations for successful future lives.

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Outcomes for service users

Adult adoptees and birth families are assisted and supported to find each other in a sensitive, well-managed way that promotes the development of positive, successful relationships. They are very well prepared for varying outcomes of their searches. For example, one said, 'At the moment he is saying he doesn’t want to meet me … I'm glad I did it. They have been really supportive. It's an excellent service and I feel better for knowing and for having gone through the process. It is a positive thing in my life and has been a very positive experience.'

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Quality of service

The quality of the service is outstanding .

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Quality of service

The agency provides highly effective, sensitive and individualised support and counselling services that result in good and improving outcomes for children and adults. Engagement with adoptive parents is extremely effective and quickly results in improved outcomes for children. For example, an adoptive parent said, 'From the outset, our social work therapist had an excellent understanding of our needs. She has provided moral support to tackle the many issues in an appropriate manner. Her experience has been much appreciated and at times invaluable. The service meets our needs in every way.'

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Quality of service

Direct work with children is highly skilled, sensitive and purposeful. It supports children exceptionally well to explore their feelings, share their anxieties and take the small steps needed to change their lives. One adoptive parent said, 'The difference in my child is amazing. He was a nervous wreck; the therapist has helped him enormously to build confidence'.

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Quality of service

By helping adopters to understand the attachment and other needs of their children, the agency helps adoptive families to form stronger bonds and to enjoy their lives together more. The agency provides adoptive parents with helpful, individually tailored behaviour management strategies, materials and resources. Their intervention successfully prevents family breakdown. The agency is aware of only two adoptive placement breakdowns in 10 years. This demonstrates that the service provided is tremendously helpful and very successful in supporting families to work through their difficulties and to achieve stability.

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Quality of service

The agency has a sustained track record of successfully placing sibling groups together and helping separated siblings to maintain contact, where this is in their best interests. Some of the social workers have first-hand knowledge of children's birth families, having worked for the agency for very many years. This helps them to expediently and effectively respond to questions from children and adult adopters and to trace birth families quickly.

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Quality of service

The agency supports children to sustain and improve education placements that are at risk of breaking down. The training it provides for schools is very effective at helping teachers to understand the best ways to manage and teach individual adoptees with complex emotional and behavioural needs. As a result, children with challenging behaviour settle down well in school, achieve better results and develop friendships with peers.

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Quality of service

The experience and knowledge of social work staff is highly valued by the regional multi-agency post-adoption support group. Collaborative working with other agencies is a key strength of the agency. For example, children benefit from the effective interagency work with the child and adolescent mental health service, (CAMHS). The agency's interventions assist adoptive parents to develop the skills they need when supporting a child going through therapy. The agency provides guidance and support to adopters to develop their understanding of the child's emotional needs. This promotes more nurturing and effective parenting. It results in improvements in children's behaviour and a reduction in their anxieties.

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Quality of service

Feedback from all service-users is very positive and the agency receives an extremely high number of thank you cards demonstrating it is a much valued and successful resource. People say they appreciate the sensitivity and genuine care shown by social workers who 'go the extra mile' to help them on their journey. For example, an adult adoptee in receipt of intermediary services said, 'They have been excellent. We had really professional conversations. They explained all processes and made it clear it might not be a positive outcome. They supported me every step of the way and it has been an emotional journey- like fitting together jigsaw pieces. The impact on me emotionally was totally explained in a caring way that I understood.'

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Quality of service

Equally, birth parents who receive counselling are impressed with the high quality standard of service. For example, one said, 'Nothing could have done better. I have been really impressed with their professionalism and their caring demeanour and attitude - I feel they really care about me and deal with me in a comforting and warm way.'

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Quality of service

The agency engages specialist services as necessary to assist their work. For example, they engage a translation service to assist with birth parent counselling to immigrants whose English is limited. Through this, they ensure that all birth parents receive good information and advice and have a clear understanding of adoption. This ensures they are fully informed about the impact of adoption on their lives and their children's lives.

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Safeguarding

The service is outstanding at keeping children and young people safe and feeling safe.

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Safeguarding

The adoption agency protects children by placing safeguarding at the heart of its service. Robust recruitment practices ensure that all those who work for the adoption agency are fully vetted and as far as possible, are suitable people to work with children and families.

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Safeguarding

Social workers are highly trained professionals who keep up to date with developments in the social care sector. They are fully aware of recent research and findings relating to safeguarding practice and the increased level of risk to adopted children. They constantly review their policies and working practices to ensure that they take account of new research and known safeguarding concerns. For example, social workers ensure that adoptive parents know how to protect children using social media. The agency provides high quality, effective advice and guidance that helps adoptive parents to keep children safe from risks associated with bullying and going missing from home. It helps them to manage drug and alcohol misuse among adopted teenagers and this supports children to stay safe.

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Safeguarding

There have been no allegations made about adopters or professionals but social workers have a good understanding of how to protect children and families in the event of an allegation or disclosure of abuse. The service has easy access to the Caritas designated safeguarding officer and long-established, open communication links with the local authority safeguarding children board.

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Safeguarding

Social workers ensure that adopters have a good understanding of the impact of early abuse on children and support them to provide safer care by raising their awareness of abuse and the signs of safeguarding concerns. There have been no serious incidents in families supported by the agency.

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Safeguarding

Contact between adult adoptees and birth families is very carefully risk assessed and action is taken to ensure the safety of all parties, including the agency's staff. For example, in relation to birth parent counselling, a local authority contracting social worker explained, 'We had an incident where we had to risk assess the safety of delivering a service because of the birth father's unsafe behaviour. We worked closely so that they could provide a service to the birth mother. They went above and beyond to provide it but sadly there could only be one session because of the birth father's behaviour. They kept the birth mother and staff safe.'

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Safeguarding

The agency has had one complaint since the last inspection. This resulted from a failure to communicate with adoptive parents that the agency would not duplicate a service already being provided by another agency. This is to ensure that adoptive parents receive a clear and focused service from one agency and to avoid confusion. The agency took prompt action to improve its literature so that adopters and others clearly understand when and why a service cannot be provided. This demonstrates that the agency is responsive to concerns raised and takes prompt action to improve.

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Leadership and management

The leadership and management of the adoption support agency are good .

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Leadership and management

long-standing and well-qualified social worker with a wealth of experience and expertise in both fostering and adoption. She manages the service effectively with the aid of a team manager.

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Leadership and management

The agency continues to maintain high standards in birth parent counselling services. Commissioners report, 'They provide one of the fastest and most efficient independent counselling services. The social worker is very knowledgeable and birth parents tell me the service is good and helpful.'

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Leadership and management

Quality assurance and monitoring of the agency is rigorous and ensures that leaders and managers have a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the service and areas for development. Regular reviews of the operation of the service are collated into succinct, informative reports to trustees. This ensures that the provider is fully aware of the quality of the provision and the challenges facing the agency.

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Leadership and management

Feedback from service users is gathered with a view to informing the development of the service. Apart from one complaint received since the last inspection, the extensive feedback received has been extremely positive, demonstrating that the agency consistently delivers a high quality service, in keeping with service users' expectations.

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Leadership and management

Relationships with commissioners and other agencies are excellent. Commissioners report the agency provides 'extremely good records of their involvement - a chronology of actions form start to finish.' The agency has open communication with its commissioners, providing copies of evaluation feedback from service users at the end of their involvement. This ensures any concerns about their practice are shared immediately with commissioners, although none have been raised.

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Leadership and management

The Statement of Purpose provides a good, well-written overview of the agency for all those using the services it provides. The children's guide is available in three different formats and is further amended to meet the communication needs of each individual child. Records demonstrate that each child receives a bespoke guide that explains the purpose of the agency, their rights and how to make a complaint. This demonstrates the agency ensures that children know what to expect from the service and takes into account their individual communication needs. Records are very well kept and confidentially stored.

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Leadership and management

Staff complete mandatory training in all recommended areas. In addition, the therapist and counsellors are highly qualified and very well trained. This enables them to deliver effective therapeutic interventions and counselling services. Staff also deliver training to other professionals and take a leading role in discussion forums where political and national changes are explored.

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Leadership and management

The capacity to improve is good. The three recommendations from the previous inspection have been acted upon and resulted in improvements to the service. However, one relates to ensuring that children and adults affected by adoption receive an assessment of their adoption support needs. Although this has been implemented, the assessment is minimal. Most of the assessment and subsequent planned interventions are written in children's case notes. This does not provide a clear and focused record of planning, intervention and review of a child's progress.

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Leadership and management

Since the last inspection, the team manager has retired and a new team manager is now in post. This was an internal promotion and there was a gap in staffing for some months during the recruitment of new social work staff. As a result, there has been some slippage in the development of the service and not all plans for change identified in the development plan have been fully implemented. For example, plans to actively engage service users in service planning and development have not yet been implemented.

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Leadership and management

There has been some slippage in the timeliness of service provision to adopted adults. Service users have accepted delays in service provision as clear timeframes have been given and adhered to. For example, one said, 'There was a waiting list of about 6 months which I accepted. They explained why. They have been excellent.' A full staff team is now in post and the agency is improving the timeliness of the service provision. Commissioners report, 'We expect them to make contact with adopted adults within 10 days, which they do. They have always provided an efficient service and feedback from adopted adults has always been very positive.'

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About this inspection

The purpose of this inspection is to assure children and young people, parents, the public, local authorities and government of the quality and standard of the service provided. The inspection was carried out under the Care Standards Act 2000 to assess the effectiveness of the service and to consider how well it complies with the relevant regulations and meets the national minimum standards.

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About this inspection

The report details the main strengths, any areas for improvement, including any breaches of regulation, and any failure to meet national minimum standards. The judgements included in the report are made against the inspection framework and the evaluation schedule for the inspection of adoption support agencies.

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