Services Provided

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

SWIIS Foster Care Scotland was established in 2004 as an Independent Fostering Provider joining the already successful SWIIS Foster Care founded in 1999 within the SWIIS social care group of related companies. 

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
• education support
• 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
• 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 SVQ 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
• Many of our carers have previous experience as carers or relevant work experience.

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

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:

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

Our sister company in the North East completed a Carer Feedback Survey 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!”