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Time management and case load management for Newly Qualified Social Worker’s – online Teams meeting with PowerPoint, videos and discussions.

Click here to join the meeting

The WAYPOINT (Working Alongside Young People & Others In Networks Therapeutically) Team is part of the Fostering Service. WAYPOINT provide therapeutically informed support to children, families, foster carers, and professional networks. This support is additional to the support provided by your supervising social worker and children’s social workers.

The monthly WAYPOINT Drop-in sessions are facilitated by Dan Charnock, WAYPOINT Senior Social Worker and are open to all mainstream foster carers. The aim of the WAYPOINT Drop in is to provide a reflective and open space for foster carers to come along and discuss issues or concerns you may be facing. While each session includes a space to reflect on challenges, there is also a significant focus on sharing strategies and thinking about therapeutic approaches to difficult situations and celebrating successes.

You don’t have to be going through a difficult time to attend – peer support, learning and reflection is always valuable, and there is no pressure for anyone to share within the sessions. Topics for each session tend to arise on the day, ensuring the focus is relevant to the content brought to the drop in. However, there is also the option to agree a topic for a future session to enable a more in-depth focus. Discussion often includes topics such as attachment, trauma, and use of therapeutic approaches such as PACE and NVR, and ideas come not only from Dan but from within the group.

Luke Lyons from Avon Fire and Rescue will be talking about home fire safety and how to stay safe in the event of a fire.

Come along,  listen and find out about your free visit and free available equipment - subject to meeting the criteria.

Course tutor: Holly Shephard (Trainee Educational Psychologist)

Would you like to know more about supporting children with attention difficulties including ADHD?

If so, please join our session run by the South Glos Educational Psychology Service. The session aims to give you a wider knowledge of ADHD and attention-related difficulties, how a deficit in executive functioning fits into the bracket of ADHD, and which children are more likely to have these types of difficulties and why.

We hope for you to come away with strategies to help a child cope with attention difficulties, to help you manage and support a child with these difficulties and to minimise the knock-on effects on family life. We also aim for you to have an understanding of the difficulties the child may be experiencing at school and help you understand the support system at school.’

This session is broken into 3 parts with activities throughout.

What is the STAR programme?


The STAR Programme has been designed to support South Gloucestershire's Children's Services to embed our Practice model. It brings together Signs of Safety, Trauma Informed practice and Systemic approaches.

The Purpose for the support groups

Jakie Dyer will be giving a presentation during this session on 'Chronic Sorrow'.

We realise that fostering can be really difficult at times. Perhaps the only people who really understand it are other foster carers and so therefore we want to give you a place to meet up.

There will be biscuits and/or cake, coffee, tea, and an opportunity for an informal chat at all of the meetings.

Although these will be informal meetings, each session will have a brief agenda, attendance list, and agreed group rules. This is to help those who don’t know anyone and feel awkward about coming along to a new meeting, to feel that they won’t be left alone on the side-lines.

These sessions should be recorded on your Personal Development Plan (PDP).

The Virtual School value the time they spend with carers, and to enable this to be an even more successful partnership between school and home, have arranged four sessions to take place over the school year.

This fourth session is a being held as a twilight 'Drop in'.  There is no specific focus for this session, rather it is a means for you to have access to the Virtual School and to raise any questions/concerns that you may have.  Equally if there are any Virtual School updates or developments, these will be shared with you at this session.

Do you have the technical knowledge to help manage young people’s phone’s, this includes app’s and practical know how on changing settings in phones etc? 

The premise is to help you keep young people safe while they use their phone.

Felix Lester of Avon and Sommerset Police will offer hints and tips on how to manage a young person phone

This is a 3 hr workshop to explore direct work skills that can be used when working with young people.

The focus of these sessions will be to give awareness of Therapeutic life story work as well as general life story work which can help children understand their life story and promote their identity and attachments.

The workshop will be facilitated by Rhian Phillips and Grace Beckett who will use principles from Richard Rose’s Therapeutic Life Story Work Diploma.

This event will cover the following topics: 

Training
Chris and Beccy will be joining us to discuss training. They have several topics they wish to cover, and this session will provide you with the opportunity to offer feedback on our training events.

Risk Outside the Home (ROTH)
New guidelines and procedures have been introduced regarding the council’s approach to risk outside the home (ROTH) for our children and young people in care. Helen and Katie will be joining us to present the new ROTH Tool, which is designed to assist professionals in assessing and understanding any concerns you might have about risks faced by children and young people outside their homes.

Kinship Strategy
Following the UK Government's launch of the first-ever National Kinship Care Strategy. Louise will be sharing how this new strategy will impact South Gloucestershire's Kinship Carers (Connected Carers). This session will also provide an opportunity for you to ask any questions or raise any queries regarding the new strategy.

Wellbeing and Support
As a fostering service, we understand the importance of support and are currently reviewing our support and wellbeing offer. Following the 'Fostering Support & Wellbeing' survey sent out on [INSERT DATE], Mercedes will be hosting a discussion table to share the feedback received and gather your thoughts on how we can effectively implement this feedback to improve our wellbeing and support offer.

What to expect
If you are new to our engagement events, here’s what to expect: upon arrival and after grabbing a drink and a biscuit, attendees will be divided into groups. Each group will spend 20 minutes at every table, allowing you the opportunity to engage in discussions on all topics.