In collaboration with the Cross Border Child Safeguarding Working Group, IAC is delighted to contribute to, and support CFAB in, promoting a new guide on international kinship care placements, designed to help minimise breakdown when Looked After Children are placed with family members abroad.
The guide is now published and can be downloaded here.
CFAB state that in 2019, 34.3% of all children born in England and Wales had either one or both parents born outside of the UK, up from 33.8% in 2018. With more children on the move than ever before, and increasing numbers of multinational and foreign national families, and with 78,150 children in care in England alone, more and more children are having kinship care options explored abroad, as well as in the UK.
Despite the benefits that are associated with international kinship care placements, such as allowing the child to maintain a sense of family identity, there are also many challenges. IAC's Outbound Permanence Service supports local authorities and legal professionals with expert advice to develop good care planning, reduce costs to public spending, and crucially minimise delays for children. The service is available on an annual subscription, with substantially reduced charges to existing partner local authorities already working with IAC for delivery of intercountry adoption services.
Our CEO, Satwinder Sandhu, a speaker at CFAB's International Child Protection Conference, contributed to the guide along with our Outbound Team, and said:
"It is so important that we get it right for children when considering placing them abroad with family members. It is amazing if someone can offer a vulnerable child in their extended family a permanent home, but the children we are working with will have experienced loss, separation and trauma, and moving abroad is also a huge change. We know what works in adoption practice and so applying this knowledge to other kinship permanence arrangements is a great example of using what works. We were delighted to be asked to contribute to CFAB's new guide and conference, and know that both will go some way in improving practice. The guide is a must read for anyone, Lawyers, Social Workers, Judges and Guardians, involved in the care planning for children affected."