Residential, Fostering & Adoption

The Action for Children residential care model represents a comprehensive framework under which all residential care provision in Action for Children should operate. This framework is one that aims to meet the needs of children and promotes support that has been proven to be valuable and beneficial to children in residential care.

This model is applicable to different user requirements and situations (e.g. fostering, residential homes and short breaks) but is based on an understanding that each children’s home must have a clear Statement of Purpose and effective management and leadership to ensure that the different needs of all the children living together in a home are being met.

The key features of children’s homes operated by Action for Children include:

Quality assurance and impact

The impact of children’s homes will be focused on areas of health, safety, education and relationships with adults and peers.
Outcomes will be recorded and demonstrable at individual and aggregate levels, using Action for Children’s outcomes database, e-Aspire.
The workforce will be qualified to required minimal standards but trained to advanced levels in the provision of residential care.

Co-production with children

All children’s homes will communicate with children additionally via Mind of My Own, an app designed to encourage and enable participation of children in care planning and decision-making processes.
Young people who have lived or are living in children’s homes will be offered training to assist the quality assurance lead in their review of the effectiveness of children’s homes.
Consultation will take place with local care councils where they exist to understand the views of local children in care before new homes and approaches are designed.
The Action for Children charter has been developed with input of children and young people to reflect what’s important to them. It describes the types of care which children and young people have regularly said is consistent with meeting their needs in different settings and countries.

A resilient workforce

All staff will benefit from support in achieving required qualifications and further training and development.
The centre will also provide for development of leadership and management skills and so help homes to grow their own future leaders and provide for some staff internal development and promotion opportunities.
The majority of our homes will be supported by clinical psychologists or other specialist mental health practitioners.

Links with birth families

Action for Children staff will work to improve family relationships for young people so long as it is safe to do so.
Different homes will provide a different selection of family support activity to meet the most prominent needs of children in the local area.
Each child’s care plan will be prepared with the Local Authority and other partner agencies involved with the safeguarding of that child.

A Children’s Charter

All children living in children’s home are entitled to support to help them to overcome the effects of abuse, neglect or other fractured relationships in their birth families.
Action for Children has developed its Charter for children in care homes bearing in mind the evidence from Australia and current guidance in the UK with regards to standards and the England and Wales Care Leavers’ Charter.
This model of care seeks to support these commitments to children through use of its independent funding to purchase goods and services which will enable the commitment.
Examples of Charter rights include:
- Provision of specialist support to overcome anxiety or depression when not available through child and adolescent mental health services
- Provision of online educational support through the Action for Children online education service available to children living in care homes and foster homes provided by the charity
- Provision of additional tutoring or teaching to support educational attainment
- Provision of digital equipment to promote educational attainment or social relationship development where required
- Trips and activities away from the home to mirror those taken by many families

Our homes in Wales

Our two homes in North Wales - Tan y Bryn and Tan y Dre - are examples of how we implement our child centered residential model of care. They are widely recognised for delivering outstanding outcomes for children. In both homes, children and young people aged 9 to 18-years-old are given the support they need by our highly-trained staff.

Our therapists provide additional support and develop nurturing experiences that meet a child’s developmental needs. We work alongside the therapists that support our young people and have the input of a clinical psychologist that visits each project each month to support staff, ensuring the team are equipped and competent to deliver therapeutic interventions through their daily contact with the children and young people and promoting the trauma informed practice.

Find out what Action for Children services are available in your area.

Fostering & adoption

Fostering

Our fostering services offer a high level of personal, local support 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Our foster carers receive enough fees and allowances to allow them to focus on caring for the children or young people they are placed with.

94% of our foster carers say the service we give them has made their job easier and over 94% say that our support is very good or good.

Adoption

As one of the UK's first approved adoption agencies, Action for Children specialise in finding adoptive families for children who would typically miss out on the chance to be adopted such as brothers and/or sisters and black and minority ethnic (BME) children.

We offer parents tailored training and support through every step of the process, from the initial stages through to placement and the adoption order.