CFAB offers pre-placement support and counselling for kinship carers, to ensure families are well-equipped with the knowledge and support they need to look after children and young people, through a trauma-informed lens. Pre-placement support is a vital part of ensuring the stability and permanence of kinship care placements and can be funded by the Adoption Support Fund – which you can find out more about below.

What areas may carers need support on?

Understanding attachment and behaviour triggered by trauma

• How attachment relationships are formed and reinforced  

• How Developmental Trauma affects children's brains and emotions, and what it looks like in day-to-day behaviour and what does and doesn’t help when children have experienced trauma
• Therapeutic parenting in different cultural contexts

Managing contact

• Why contact is important and who is included in contact  
• Kinship Carers’ legal responsibilities around contact, including keeping children safe  

• Supporting children before, during and after contact

Life story work

• What is life story work and why is it important? The power of stories in identity creation  
• Shame and social stigma in life story work  
• How to talk to children and teenagers about difficult topics, including practical tips and prompts and manage your own emotion

How do we tailor our pre-placement preparation sessions to individual family needs and experiences?

• Our social-work qualified trainer will review the family’s case and experiences before each session
• Whilst these sessions are offered directly to carers, we encourage inviting the wider family so there is a broad network of support for the child – it also helps carers when their wider family network has confidence in and can see there the extensive level of guidance around them.  
• Technical support will be provided to ensure carers can access online video conferencing (on a variety of platforms, whichever is more accessible).
• We send further support materials after sessions.

• Sessions can be conducted in English or Italian.

Cost

• One session starts at £220 for CFAB members, and £280 for non-members.
• A package of three sessions starts at £460 for CFAB members and £580 for non-members.
• All of which can be paid for through the Adoption Support Fund.

The Adoption Support Fund

• Established by the Department for Education to pay for therapy service for adoptive families both before, during and after adoption, for any child up to the age of 21, and for special guardians.
• All adoptive parents have the right to an assessment of their adoption support needs, and if support needs are identified, the assessing social worker can apply to the Adoption Support Fund on the family’s behalf.
• The money for these support services, such as this pre-placement support offered by CFAB, will then be released to the local authority

If you or a carer you work with could benefit from these services, do get in touch with us at info@cfab.org.uk.