Services Provided

creating the best opportunities for children
 and young people in foster care:

SWIIS Foster Care was established in 2000 as an Independent Fostering Provider within the already successful SWIIS group of social care related companies. 

Now in our 5th year we are thriving, with registered offices in Newcastle. Manchester and Birmingham - and are developing additional resources based in Darlington, Leeds and the East Midlands, as well as a ‘sister organisation’ SWIIS Foster Care (Scotland)

Placements are available:

• on a short term, longer term, or planned respite basis.
• bridging or other task centred placements;
• for all ages including older teenagers, sibling groups and children with disabilities
• supported by structured programmes with a focus on managing risk and maximising opportunity
• including assessment and full reports where required;
• short notice (unplanned) placements subject to relevant risk assessments and the availability of suitable carers.

The SWIIS Foster Care service is different:

• We have pioneered a genuinely multi-disciplinary team approach with a focus on providing integrated services;
  • comprehensive package of social work, education and health
  • working in close partnership with placing authority social workers, local education, health and therapy providers
  • each child or young person has a care package that addresses all of their needs
• we offer best value for children, carers and placing authorities alike; - we work with local authorities to help them meet required Performance Indicators
• our placements provide demonstrable positive indicators of improvement for young people in the five key outcome areas: being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic well-being;
• all SWIIS carers have extensive pre and post approval training – including the opportunity to take relevant social care training modules and NVQ programmes.  Priority is given to issues such as Safer Caring and Managing Challenging Behaviour.

Quality Carers

Many of our carers have relevant previous experience of working with children

• all are able to draw on and learn from the experience within the team
• Over 60% of our carers have been with SWIIS for two years or more and have the experience of the many successful placements we have undertaken in the past.

SWIIS Foster Care has a positive policy of not seeking to attract existing carers from other agencies.

As a result, we have been able to bring nearly 200 new families into fostering across our three Regional areas and have increased the range of local placement choice available to provide good matches and positive placements for  children and young people.

Support for carers is a key priority: we want to ensure stability and continuity for children and young people, with carers who feel confident and positive about their role.

Therapeutic input and counselling can be accessed as necessary for children and young people and has also been found to be beneficial for carers managing difficult or traumatic issues in specific placements.

We provide:

• realistic levels of pay,
• full out of hours support,
• respite care and other resources designed to retain and reward our excellent carers
  

Our North East Carer Feedback Survey was completed in April / May 2005.  Our carers’ comments speak for themselves:

“Foster caring has been harder than we expected but more worthwhile than anything we could imagine – and SWIIS helped to make that so.”

“My experience with SWIIS is that they give you the best training, explain everything, good backup and good link workers.  Just everything!”