Community of Practice for siblings next event

Community of Practice for siblings next event

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…

  • Supporting sibling relationships in kinship care settings
  • How we support sibling and family relationships when families are affected by imprisonment
  • Updates on a range of Community-wide activity, including next steps with Staying Together and Connected

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.

Community of Practice – latest newsletter

Community of Practice – latest 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.

Scottish Government update – Spring 2024

Scottish Government update – Spring 2024

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.

Poem – ‘To Have You There By My Side’

Poem – ‘To Have You There By My Side’

At the recent Community of Practice event on 1 February, Karen Morrison, founder and chair from STAR (Siblings Reunited) read out a poem written by a teenage girl who came to STAR with her older sister. ‘To Have You There By My Side’ is a powerful reminder of the importance of siblings being able to always remain together.

Community of Practice – latest online session

Community of Practice – latest online session

The latest session of the Community of Practice for siblings focused on the work ongoing in West Dunbartonshire.

More than 65 practitioners from across Scotland came together for the online event on Thursday 1 February.

This was the second online session following the first webinar in October and a face to face event in June and December 2023.

Ailsa Dinwoodie, The Promise Lead Officer at West Dunbartonshire Council presented findings of a survey of brothers and sisters in care.

It has been a year since the local authority started on their journey and Ailsa highlighted the work that has been ongoing since then. You can read more about Ailsa’s presentation here.

At the virtual session, practitioners got the opportunity to consider a series of questions in break out rooms, including:

  • What would this data tell you? Or not tell you?
  • Does it resonate with your experience?
  • What are/would your priorities for change be based on this data?
  • How have/are you using data to shift outcomes for the siblings your organisation works with?
  • How have you effectively won hearts and minds when trying to deliver change?

The event ended with a touching poem written by a young person read out by Karen Morrison from STAR (Siblings Reunited).

Speaking afterwards Tom Boyd from The Promise Scotland said: “What a great session and another significant step for the Community of Practice. I think there is now a sense of connection across Scotland and this is only going to grow in the year ahead.”

Kate Richardson, the Chair of Stand Up For Siblings added: “A massive thank you to everyone who helped organise the event and to all our practitioners who attended. Thank you to Ailsa and the team at West Dunbartonshire for sharing the amazing work they are doing. We look forward to hearing how this work develops.”

Dates for future events are available on the Community of Practice page.

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