The chair of Stand Up For Siblings Kate Richardson is walking the Edinburgh Kiltwalk on 18 September 2022 to raise funds for Siblings Reunited (STAR).
Siblings Reunited (STAR) reunites brothers and sisters separated in the care system, through adoption or kinship care by providing the opportunity for quality and regular sibling contact.
Donate to Kate’s Just Giving page.
You will have hopefully heard already about the evaluation of Siblings Reunited (STAR) being undertaken by the Association for Fostering, Kinship and Adoption (AFKA) Scotland, funded by The Promise Scotland.
Further information about the work we are doing is provided here.
We are now at the next stage of our recruitment process and would like to conduct either online or face-to-face interviews with the following people:
If you can spare an hour to talk to us, please email Mark Hardy mark.hardy@afkascotland.org. Also, if you know of someone who might be interested in being interviewed, please share these details with them.
Finally, a huge Thank You! Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the project so far, either by filling out online surveys, or posting your comments into the postbox at STAR. If you have not yet completed a survey, the online survey can be found here, or complete a post-card survey next time you visit STAR.
Would you like to help develop and spread good practice in supporting relationships between brothers and sisters in care in Scotland?
As part of funding from The Promise Scotland, AFKA Scotland is evaluating Siblings Reunited (STAR) in Fife. STAR is a specialist service supporting family time together for brothers and sisters where local authorities are unable to provide this from within their own resources. AFKA’s research team are looking to hear from lots of people about their views and experiences of STAR. You can watch a short video introducing the research here.
You can complete the online survey if you are:
Please look out for more information we’ll be sharing through social media and e-mail, and it would be very helpful if you can re-share this information within your networks. To find out more about ways that you can take part, please e-mail mark.hardy@afkascotland.org
The second phase of a new research project ‘Staying Connected’ is now underway.
The research by Stand Up For Siblings partner SCRA and Families Outside, aims to address the gap in knowledge around ‘looked after’ children and young people’s experiences of sibling imprisonment.
More information about this exciting and important piece of research is available on SCRA’s website.
In this phase, the researchers will begin to explore the issues around the identification, restoration, and maintenance of relationships between brothers and sisters where one sibling is care-experienced and one is on remand or serving a custodial sentence.
To do this they are looking to speak to the following groups of children and young people:
The researchers are using a wide definition of “care-experience” and “sibling” in line with the work of The Promise and the Children’s Act (Scotland) 2020.
If you are interested in taking part in the research, work with groups who might be interested, or just want to know more, please read this flyer for more details or get in touch with the project researcher Kirsty Deacon.
Only one in five infants taken into care in Scotland who had older brothers or sisters were initially placed with them, according to a new study.
The report – Born Into Care – which was funded by the Scottish Government has been published today, Wednesday 13 April 2022.
The research, led by Dr Linda Cusworth, of Lancaster University, found that although on the whole families were known to services before their birth, and thus their arrival was expected, most infants were not placed with their older brothers and sisters. Two years later, only a third of children were living with a brother or sister.
The research team, from the Universities of Lancaster and Stirling, and from Stand Up For Siblings partner SCRA, analysed data for all 2,849 infants who entered the care system via the Children’s Hearing before they were a year old between 1st April 2013 and 31st March 2020, and looked in depth at the circumstances of 70 of those children and their families.
The study also explored the circumstances of families where infants were removed, uncovering complex needs relating to poverty and housing problems, mental health, substance misuse, domestic abuse and offending histories.
Researchers also found that many of the parents were recorded as having difficult and disrupted childhoods themselves, with significant proportions having experienced abuse or neglect. Over a third (37%) of mothers and a quarter (24%) of fathers were care experienced.
Around a third of parents did not have any older children. But the study found that this was not the first child who had become looked after away from home for many of the parents.
Nine out of ten of the mothers known to have older children had at least one child previously removed, with one in five having had three or more children taken into care.
Although less information was recorded for fathers, over half (56%) of those with older children were known to have had a previous child removed from their care.
Lead author Dr Linda Cusworth said: “It is clear from our study that these families have multiple and complex needs. This emphasises the need for a range of early, sensitive and flexible support services to support parents, including those who are care experienced, and those who have had a child previously removed from their care.”
Dr Cusworth added: “The decision to remove a child at or soon after birth is probably the most difficult decision that professionals can make to intervene in family life. It is traumatic for mothers, fathers and wider family networks. It is important to understand more about the circumstances in which removal of babies shortly after birth takes place in Scotland, and this study helps to provide some of that information.”
The use of population-level data by this study also enabled important comparisons with similar research on compulsory care proceedings in England and Wales.
This study found that infants under a year old formed 20% of all children who entered care via the Children’s Hearings System in Scotland. This is a lower proportion than other parts of the UK. In Wales, 30% of all children entering care proceedings between 2011 and 2018 were under a year old, while in England, this was 27% (between 2007/08 and 2016/17).
Between 2013/14 and 2019/20, the proportion of infants in Scotland who became looked after away from home as newborns (less than seven days old) was fairly stable at around a third. By comparison, in England and Wales the proportion of infants who entered care proceedings as newborns was higher, and showed an upward trend across the period – from 43% to 51% in England, and from 40% to 51% in Wales.
Professor Karen Broadhurst, who led the work in England and Wales, said: “The proportion of infants who enter care as newborns in Scotland is lower than in England and Wales, where there is a trend over recent years towards issuing care proceedings closer to birth.
“Our findings raise questions about differences in policy and practice in the three countries in relation to compulsory removal of infants at or close to birth, and seem to suggest that Scotland may be less pre-emptive.”
A joint research project between Stand Up for Siblings partner SCRA and Families Outside has been announced. The project ‘Staying Connected: Care-experienced children and young people with a sibling in custody’ has been funded by The Promise Scotland.
Background
Surveys of people in prison show relatively high levels of care experience, suggesting there are likely significant numbers of children and young people who have a sibling in prison who are in care themselves, yet we know nothing about these experiences. Limited research is available which considers the impact of the imprisonment of a brother or sister for children and young people, with little evidence on care-experienced children and young people’s perspectives of having a family member in prison either.
Aims
This project aims to address the gap in knowledge around ‘looked after’ children and young people’s experiences of sibling imprisonment. It will initially explore the issues around the identification, restoration, and maintenance of sibling relationships where one sibling is care-experienced* and one is on remand or serving a custodial sentence. It will then look at how these issues can be addressed and the implementation of processes and structures to enable these relationships to be supported.
What we will be doing
The research part of the project will find the evidence to show how often siblings are separated in this way and what it means to brothers and sisters in care and in prison to be separated from each other.
It will be carried out in two phases:
Phase 1 (February 2022– July 2022) – Data collection: a sample of case files from SCRA’s case management system will be analysed to identify levels of sibling imprisonment for looked after children and what data is held about these cases.
Phase 2 (August 2022 – February 2023) – Interviews: children and young people who are or have been in care with experience of a sibling on remand or serving a sentence in prison or secure accommodation, or who are currently on remand or in custody and have a care-experienced sibling, will be invited to take part in interviews.
A Young Person’s Expert Advisory Group will oversee the project and be involved at key stages in the process to provide their expert guidance and feed into any recommendations and dissemination plans.
Interested in getting involved?
If you are interested in taking part in the research, work with groups who might be interested, or just want to know more, please get in touch with Kirsty Deacon.
Please look out for further information which will be coming soon on how children and young people can take part in this study.
* “Care-experience” here means all looked after children and young people. This includes children with Compulsory Supervision Orders made by Children’s Hearings and living at home, with kinship or foster carers, in residential units/schools or secure units. It also includes those in the care of a local authority on a voluntary basis, and those with Permanence Orders made by the courts.