Fostering and adoption

The Children & Families Resource Team is responsible for the recruitment, assessment, training and support of carers for children and young people.

Our services include foster care, adoption and permanence, respite care for children with disabilities, and outreach support. We also provide assessment and support services for kinship care arrangements, and reports for the courts in relation to legally securing family care.

We are committed to supporting carer families in ensuring that National Care Standards are met by upholding principles of dignity, privacy, choice, safety, diversity and equality to maximise the potential of each child and young person. We are committed to working with partner agencies to provide continuously improving services which are responsive to service user's changing needs.

Service Standards

In addition to adhering to the Children & Families service standards, we will, in all cases:

• Respond to service requests within one week
• Offer visits within two weeks of receiving a request
• Allocate a qualified social worker to every carer applicant
• Review all carers annually
• Additionally, for all council carers, we will
• Send out information packs to potential new carers within one working day
• Complete carer assessments within six months of allocating a social worker
• Deliver ?Skills To Foster? training to all new carers prior to them being approved
• Provide all mandatory training for carers within two years of registration
• Carry out at least one unannounced visit per year
• Comply with National Care Standards for Fostering and Adoption

Contact Tel 01506 775959 Fax 01506 775926 Email fostercare@westlothian.gov.uk website (new window) www.wlcresources.org.uk