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Foster carers characterise a highly diverse workforce that shares the choice to provide a home and family for children who can no longer reside with their family. This diversity makes supporting and providing for carers’ training needs a complex task for fostering services. Understanding what might influence their engagement in training would be useful. This article outlines themes related to foster carers’ engagement with social pedagogy, using data from the Head, Heart, Hands (HHH) programme evaluation. Analysis of interviews with seventy-six foster carers over a period of three years is presented. The emerging themes were used to devise an illustrative typology of receptiveness to training. The themes relate to the perceived impact of HHH on their practice and compatibility with the existing children’s social care (CSC) system. The article explores the factors that may influence foster carers’ positioning within the typology. The contributions that such a typology might make to the wider evidence base across CSC, in terms of the implementation and potential impacts of intervention, are discussed.

Within a context of substantial adoption policy reform in England, this paper explores post adoption support. Findings from a small-scale survey of 22 local authorities in England and interviews with 11 adoption practitioners (from 11 of the authorities that completed the survey) are presented and related national policy discussed. The paper argues that support should continue postmatching a child with their adoptive parent(s) and that this should be the norm rather than the exception. It also emphasizes the need to improve the availability of and access to post adoption support in a timely manner.

This paper utilizes data gathered as part of an exploratory study to assess the costs and impact of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), to examine the impact that the lead professional role had on families and workers. The study found that both families and workers believed the lead professional to be central to the CAF process, providing a range of support, coordinating multi-agency responses to need and acting as a single point of contact between families and workers. The paper highlights the need for consideration to be given to inter-agency working, data sharing, training for workers and the capacity implications for those taking on the role. The extent to which the lead professional might be more integrated into the continuum of support for vulnerable children and families is also examined. The paper highlights the need to consider the lead professional's role in not only preventing the need for more intensive services, such as those provided by statutory social work, but also maintaining outcomes achieved once a child protection plan is closed, or a child is reunified with his or her birth family after a period of being in care. The implications of the findings for policy and practice are discussed.

PurposeIn England in recent years, concerns have been raised about the proportion of time social workers and other frontline children's social care practitioners spend carrying out desk‐based, administrative activities. This article aims to report time use activity data from front line workers on the amount of time spent on different activities to support children in need (as defined by the 1989 Children Act).Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected from a range of sources including focus groups, event records (diaries completed by practitioners) and online surveys.FindingsThe proportion of time spent on direct and indirect activities varies according to the types of process. Those associated with ongoing support have the highest proportion of direct activity, whereas those associated with decision making, especially if a one‐off activity, have the highest proportion of administrative activities. The greater the needs of the child, the more direct and indirect support was given, but there was some variation across social work teams. But the activities of social workers are interconnected, making it difficult to provide conclusive evidence, but the concern about the imbalance between direct work and administrative tasks seems justified.Research implications/limitationsThe findings highlight the complexity of exploring how social workers spend their time and how the proportion of time spent on direct and indirect activities is determined by the needs and circumstances of children and their families.Practical implicationsWider contextual practice issues are also explored including the recent increases in referrals to children's social care and the use of electronic recording systems.Originality/valueThe breakdown of the activities using the approach outlined in the article increases transparency in understanding how social workers spend their time.

Multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) is a specialist foster care programme specifically designed for children and young people who display emotional or behavioural difficulties. Developed in the US at the Oregon Social Learning Centre the programme has since been introduced in a number of countries around the world. The focus of this paper is on the implementation of the adolescent programme in England (MTFCE-A) and the development of a research methodology to estimate the child welfare unit costs of the programme. A ‘bottom up’ approach to estimating unit costs is introduced and the costs of the MTFCE-A programme are compared to other placement types. The paper compares the costs of MTFCE-A placements with placements prior to and following MTFCE-A for a small sample of children and young people. The findings show a reduction in costs during the time spent in MTFCE-A placements. Comparisons are also drawn with the costs of alternative placements identified for the children and young people had they not been placed with MTFCE-A carers.

In veel ontwikkelde landen wordt in toenemende mate kritiek geleverd op residentiële interventies bij kinderen en jongeren. Tegen de achtergrond hiervan vond in het voorjaar 2016 in Engeland een internationale conferentie plaats van experts uit 13 landen op het gebied van therapeutische residentiële zorg (TRZ). De volgende werkdefinitie van TRZ was leidend: "Therapeutische residentiële zorg omvat het geplande gebruik van een speciaal hiervoor ontwikkelde, multidimensionale leefomgeving, die tot doel heeft behandeling, onderwijs, socialisatie, ondersteuning en bescherming te bieden of te versterken voor kinderen en jongeren met welomschreven psychische en/of gedragsmatige problematiek; dit in samenwerking met hun gezin/familie en een breed scala aan formele en informele hulpbronnen in de samenleving". De bijeenkomst stond in het teken van kennisuitwisseling en het ontwikkelen van een internationale onderzoeksagenda. Tevens werden de contouren van een consensusverklaring over TRZ besproken. Deze verklaring, die hier integraal wordt weergegeven, omvat onder meer vijf basisprincipes van zorg, die in de visie van de Werkgroep TRZ altijd richtinggevend dienen te zijn voor goede residentiële jeugdhulp.