A massive congratulations to STAR (Siblings Reunited) for winning a prestiguous award at Fife’s Volunteering and Voluntary Sector awards last night (5th June). The charity, which helps brothers and sisters spend quality time together, received the Children, Young People and Families Award. Congratulations from everyone at Stand Up For Siblings. It is very well deserved for the amazing work you do.
If you haven’t already signed up, there’s still time to register for the Community of Practice for siblings next face to face event. It will take place on Tuesday 25 June at STAR. Find out more and sign up here. In addition, registration is now open for the rest of our events in 2024. Don’t miss out – register now!
We look forward to welcoming you to our collaborative Community of Practice for brothers and sisters in Scotland.
20 August – Online
Register here.
1 October – Rossie Young People’s Trust
Register here.
21 November – Online
Register here.
Have you signed up for the next Community of Practice online event? You can sign up now. It takes place on Thursday 16 May 2024 from 10am-12.30pm.
The programme includes…
We look forward to seeing you there!
Remember, you can keep up to date with the Community of Practice news, by signing up for our newsletter.
The spring issue of the Community of Practice for Siblings newsletter has been published. You can view it here. This edition includes a round up of the February event, as well as an update from the Scottish Government. If you haven’t already subscribed to receive the newsletter, you can sign up here.
We would like to express our thanks to the organising team for the Community of Practice who have worked so hard setting up this valuable forum. It is great to see such an enthusiastic group from across the sector come together to share learning and good practice, and celebrate progress and achievements in relation to keeping siblings together and connected.
Learning and development
We know that there is a huge amount of positive work happening across services and organisations in Scotland to ensure that the rights of children to stay together and connected with their siblings is realised. We know that services, organisations and local areas are at different stages with this work and there is a need to ensure consistency of good practice and effective implementation. We are very aware that everyone’s capacity remains very tight and there many competing demands. As such, we have convened a meeting of the Staying Together and Connected (STaC) Learning, Development and Leadership sub-group on 25 March. This group produced a comprehensive Learning, Development and Leadership Framework alongside the STaC Group’s final report setting out the knowledge, skills and abilities required in relation to siblings at three levels (aware, informed, enhanced).
We plan to seek the group’s views on what additional resource would be most beneficial to support the workforce with regard to the implementation of the siblings legislation and guidance. We would be happy to come to speak at a future Community of Practice meeting to discuss this work and to seek your input on what type of learning resources you think would be most helpful for the multi-agency workforce (and caregivers) who engage directly with children, young people and families
Data
Following on from the very interesting presentation on siblings data by West Dumbartonshire Council at the last Community of Practice meeting, we are continuing to consider how we can improve the data around siblings being separated. The next step will be to add a further item to the Looked after Children Scotland data return (CLAS) so we can gain a better understanding of the reasons that siblings have been separated. Members of the community who wish to participate in the further development of data on sibling separation can get in touch with craig.kellock@gov.scot.
Advocacy
The STAC report highlighted the important part effective advocacy can play in ensuring children’s rights in relation to their siblings are respected and upheld. You may be aware that The Promise Scotland have undertaken and completed work to scope a national lifelong advocacy service for care experienced people and their families. The outcome of this work was submitted in a report to Ministers in December 2023 and was published on The Promise Scotland website in February 2024.
In developing this report, The Promise Scotland engaged with advocacy providers, building on the voices and experiences heard by the Independent Care Review to make a series of recommendations on how a lifelong advocacy service could be operationalised. The report presents four phases of activity proposed to move this forward and calls on a collaborative approach across advocacy providers, experts, and care experienced children, adults and families to help achieve this.
The Scottish Government are considering the recommendations and proposals in the report including the potential for a series of engagement with advocacy providers to gather insight to further inform next steps.
We plan to provide a short update in future Siblings Community of Practice newsletters and look forward to keeping in touch with you all regularly going forward. In the meantime, if you have any questions or would like to discuss any aspect of the above update, please contact Debbie Silver – debbie.silver@gov.scot.