Dear Friends and Colleagues

 

SWAN has had another very busy year with our first Ofsted Inspection, the retirement of some workers, and some changing roles and a new worker coming to replace them.  Through all this we have continued to provide services and when it has been challenging to deliver services with fewer workers they have come up with some interesting solutions.  Huge thanks are due to Chris Kijak (Chair of Trustees) for her support of SWAN workers both formal and informal and in her PR activities for SWAN at many levels; and to David Gabriel (Company Secretary and Treasurer) for all his accounting support of SWAN which keeps us afloat; and all the other Trustees for their various practical and loyal support of SWAN.

 

Service Referral Trends

We have had slight reductions in referrals in Bristol, and Swindon but increases in Bath & NE Somerset, North Somerset, and S. Gloucestershire.  The latter is partly the result of staff vacancies in S. Glos. and SWAN being able to support them by doing more file access and schedule 2 work.

 

Adopted adult referrals In Bristol and Swindon have reduced but have increased slightly elsewhere.

 

Current birth relative referrals have nearly doubled in Bath & NE Somerset, North Somerset, and S. Gloucestershire and trebled in Swindon.

 

Referrals of adoptive families have increased in Bath & NE Somerset, and S. Gloucestershire; and stayed the same or reduced in the other authority areas.

 

We continue to do very little search and intermediary work for relatives of adopted adults.  However, we have been delighted to undertake some spot contracts for non-subscribing authorities in :

• reviewing adoption contact arrangements and
• supporting the establishment of letterbox dialogues

and would be more than happy to develop other pieces of work.

 

Worker News

We have been very sad to say farewell to Rosemary Baragwanath who has moved to work for a local authority; to Becky Scott-Brown, and Monica Diaz who has just had her first baby son, and Sandy Parkin who has retired as a SWAN Worker but rejoined as a trustee. 

 

Following two rounds of recruitment we have finally been successful in recruiting Cathy Reed to work on the Helpline and with current birth relatives.  We are really looking forward to tapping into the commitment and enthusiasm for her work that she is known for.  Cathy started with SWAN at the end of October and is now tackling lots of work for SWAN !  Fortunately Vanessa stays with us through thick and thin, and promises we’ll always be able to rely on her.

 

Our difficulty in finding new workers is shared across the country with most social work providers.  While it is reassuring that it’s not just SWAN finding it difficult to recruit, it has been very difficult to manage providing services without enough workers.  We have had to extend the remit of the helpline to visiting more people at home, or starting off pieces of urgent work prior to the allocation of a worker.  So many thanks are due to Jo Lewis particularly; and Anna, Jane, and Bridget for their flexibility and energy in taking on new ways of working. 

 

Jo has agreed to spend a trial period following Cathy’s arrival continuing to work with a backlog of current birth relatives piloting a new service framework in Bristol.  Cathy will work alongside her in this with a client group in North Somerset.  We would like to develop a groupwork resource for this often isolated group of people but will need to secure funding and volunteers to cover the additional costs.

 

Bridget has continued to cover most of the SWAN work in Swindon and earned particularly positive comments about her work from the recent files audit and from the Ofsted inspector.  Jane has managed to cover most of the work coming from Bath & NE Somerset and is branching out into adoptive family work in other areas.  It has been lovely to see workers developing specialisms by geographical or service user areas and growing in confidence as a result.  We have been able to support several people in attending NORCAP and BAAF training this year which people have reported as helpful.  We have some more work to do in developing a training programme and are very grateful to our local authority link workers for their support in gaining access to their training for our workers.

 

Ofsted Inspection

We approached our first inspection in March with some trepidation not knowing how their standard was going to be set.  I feel we were fortunate in our Inspector who took a really constructive approach to the exercise and made it a useful experience not the combative one that one can hear about.  We were thus very happy to hear about her finding that SWAN is a GOOD Adoption Support Agency.  Apparently in Ofsted-speak GOOD means VERY GOOD.  The highest rating would have been OUTSTANDING, and the lower ratings are SATISFACTORY – which means GOOD, and Inadequate.

 

We were judged OUTSTANDING in our User Focussed Services – which does seem to be the most important area to score well in.  We have been asked to do some more work on :

• our Childrens’ Guide,
• our assessment process and gaining access to assessments done by our local authority partners;
• developing a training programme
• legibility and audit of records
• a Business Continuity Plan

all of which are in hand or completed.  However the National Minimum Standards, against which we are inspected, are under review and we will need to ensure that we remain compliant with anything new that is identified to improve service delivery as well as continuing to respond to trends in service user and partner local authority demands.

 

 

 

 

Corinna Levack

Service Manager 3.11.09

Progress on our New Website Adopters Corner Adoptees Corner Birth Relatives Corner

New Helpline No. 0117 3730265

Magic Moments ...

Our Newsletters: April 2004 April 2003 October 2002

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We can provide short term assessments of need, and counselling for adoptive families who are experiencing problems. Our helpline can also help you with phone counselling and support. We can provide short term counselling and support for adopted adults seeking to find their birth relatives. We will also act as intermediaries when you find relatives and facilitate introductions if necessary Many adoptees tell us that finding birth relatives raises all sorts of issues. Our short term counselling can help you make sense of the intense feelings and support you in a pace of introductions that suits you. If you are under eighteen Many young adopted people wonder about their birth relatives and want to know more about them. This is particularly common when things are not going well at home or if you are not getting on with someone in your adoptive family. The temptation is to think that one's birth family would be better and could perhaps rescue you from difficult encounters. Sadly this is usually not the case and sometimes searching for or meeting birth relatives can often cause more problems than it solves. If you are having problems with your parents or brothers or sisters it is usually better to deal with that and not complicate things further with another set of parents. However, young people who are adopted tell us that there are many difficult things about being adopted. Sometimes people at school or in the community ask you difficult questions or sometimes school projects bring up things about being adopted. you may prefer not to think about. If you live in one of our subscribing areas and have problems that are connected to being adopted it may help to talk to a counsellor from SWAN or to ring our HELPLINE. Sometimes young people are afraid it will upset their parents to talk about their birth relatives or to ask for information. A SWAN counsellor can help with that. Sometimes, young people have difficulty in School related to their adoption - we can also help here. Do contact us if you want to talk about something related to your adoption.

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We have created a new leaflet .for birth parents, who are in the process of having children adopted. We hope soon to have a pack for Birth Parents and for social workers working with Birth Parents. Maybe you had a child adopted several years ago and have never stopped wondering what has happened to that child. When your birth child is 25 we can support you in searching for that child and act as an intermediary when we find them. We can help you to understand your feelings or think through what you can in a letter or in a prospective contact. * We can unfortunately only help if you live in one of our subscribing areas or if the adoption took place there. If you are a Birth Parent who is Currently Loosing your Child to Adoption. SWAN can provide independent free counselling support to birth relatives who are loosing their children to adoption or who are contesting adoption. We cannot stop the adoption - you need to work with your lawyer to explore that - but we can help you to look at your feelings and put you into contact with other people who have experienced this grief. We can also help you write letters if you have letterbox contact. Rejection Work: Sometimes searching for relatives does not lead to Happy Endings, but to finding that the search is fruitless, and that the one you seek, has died or rejects the opportunity to reconnect. Rejection network was formed for that reason, to support those, be they adopted or birth relatives or others who carry that grief and have lost connection with relatives. It holds meetings and has a lively website. Http://www.rags-online.org

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