Risk Assessment and Safer Care Plans

Chapter Contents

Read our Risk Assessment and Safer Care Policy

Ensuring the safety of foster children and all members of their foster family is our primary concern, and we start to explore any potential risks to the safety of individuals from the very beginning. Our Placements Team undertakes an initial risk assessment within the matching form.  This will help identify any known risks that a child may present – either to themselves or to others.

The child’s initial risk assessment will be based on the information that local authority has shared with us, and this might not be complete. It is quite possible that we will only identify risks after the child has come to live with you. Where there is cause for concern, ISP will request copies of any existing up-to-date written risk assessments or start a new safeguarding risk assessment within five working days of placement. For children up to 3 years of age, our risk assessment includes compliance with safer sleeping guidance. We have a separate risk assessment for parent-and-child placements.

Every child’s situation and needs are different. Their risk assessment therefore needs to be flexible and adaptable. However, we will always consider some core factors:

  • Are there any suicidal/serious self-harming issues? 
  • Have they experienced bullying, or do they bully others?
  • Do they present a risk to other children in terms of abuse? 
  • Do any particular situations cause them to become distressed and how can we manage this?
  • Is there a possibility they will go missing? 
  • Are they at risk of sexual exploitation? (This may trigger completion of a Child Sexual Exploitation Risk Assessment) 
  • Do substance and/or alcohol abuse create any vulnerability? 
  • Does online behaviour indicate a vulnerability to grooming/grooming others or accessing unsuitable sites/posting inappropriate images? 
  • Any risk from birth family or others, including abduction, honour based violence or radicalisation? 
  • Are there any specific health issues? 
  • Is there concern that they may be a trafficked child?
  • Is there any threat of violence to carers? 
  • Any risk of allegations against carers? 

We will ask you to read the child’s Risk Assessment and Safer Care Plan, and sign on Charms to confirm that you have read it and that you understand the risk-management strategies we agreed. Please let us know if anything changes or if you have any new concerns.

We review children’s risk assessments at least every six months and more often if there are new concerns – or if significant incidents occur. We also share new concerns and significant events with the child’s social worker and sometimes with Ofsted/other agencies.  When we review and update the risk assessment we send a copy to the child’s social worker.

Your supervising social workers will discuss the child’s risk assessment with you in supervision. Through regular discussion, it will be possible to pick up subtle changes or concerns as early as possible. It is also an opportunity to share new information and ensure that the current assessment of risk remains accurate.

Every ISP foster family creates a Household Safer Caring Plan. This helps you to record how you behave towards each other and what family rules are in place, especially in the area of safer caring.

Children who have experienced abusive relationships within their own family may think all families function in the same way. Your plan can help children understand healthier family relationships.

All families have rules, some of which are set by parents and some which are negotiated between family members. Usually, everybody knows what the rules are even though you may not talk about them all the time. For a young person, joining a foster family can be bewildering and the Family Safer Caring Plan helps them understand the rules of the foster family they are joining.

Ideally, we will be able to share the plan with children before they join your family. This will help them to understand the essential rules within the home, what is expected of them and what they can expect of you. Please review the plan annually or whenever there is any change in the household membership.

Foster parents are expected to take individual responsibility for safe care in the household, and all adult members of the household are personally accountable for their actions and decisions. Foster parents will support each other, share consistent boundaries and work together to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all members of the household. This is particularly important when caring for a child/young person who may have suffered sexual harm and presents with sexualised behaviour or over-familiar behaviour. In such circumstances, we will give specific consideration to appropriate safe care practices that will help you to meet the child’s needs whilst maintaining a safe environment for the child and all family members.

Complete our mandatory training course: Safer Care and Allegations

All applicants to foster have a household health & safety check, and your assessing social worker will review this at the annual fostering review.  The household Health & Safety Risk Assessment considers the safety of all parts of the home, garden and vehicles.  There are supplementary risk assessments for specific aspects of health & safety, to be used if relevant:

  • Boats and open water
  • Caravans, mobile homes, tents and camping equipment
  • Firearms and other weapons
  • Quad bikes, trail bikes and other motorised bikes, jet skis
  • Smallholdings and farms

The Household Health & Safety Risk Assessment includes questions about pets, but there are separate risk assessments for dogs.  We will introduce and update these assessments as you welcome new pets to your family, or on an annual basis. The risk assessment considers the safeguarding of children as well as the potential benefits of pet ownership. Provided appropriate consideration is given to a child’s safety, ownership of dogs and pets can bring many benefits to children within a fostering household.

Read our health and safety guidance in relation to pets in Part 5 of the Foster Parent Handbook.

Read our Assessment of Dogs & Pets Policy & Guidance

The usual rule is that children in foster care will have their own bedroom. However, sometimes when children are placed with several siblings, or if they need to share bedrooms on holiday, we will look at whether it is possible for them to safely share a bedroom.

We will make decisions about long-term bedroom sharing in discussion with the local authority. Permanent fostering arrangements will need to consider whether separate bedrooms can be available in the future as the children get older and need their own space and privacy from siblings.

When you make arrangements to take children on holiday, whether abroad or within the UK, we will use this risk assessment.  It includes sleeping arrangements, planned activities and insurance arrangements. If you have your own caravan or camping equipment for holidays, we will use the ‘Caravans, mobile homes, tents and camping equipment risk assessment’, and if you have a permanent holiday home, we will ask you to risk assess the property using the relevant parts of the ‘Household Health & Safety Risk Assessment’.

Read about holiday considerations in Part 3 of the Foster Parent Handbook

This risk assessment can be used for new activities planned for a young person and includes consideration of location, supervision and relative gains for the young person that may mitigate identified risk areas. This risk assessment is not necessary for everyday activities, but those where there is a heightened level of risk, e.g. horse riding and skiing. We will share the risk assessment with the child’s local authority.

Read our health and safety advice for leisure activities here.

When ISP is providing supervised contact arrangements, we will use this risk assessment to consider risk factors relating to the visiting family members which may necessitate additional supervisors or restricted movement within the community to ensure the safety of all parties.

Read about contact in Part 2 of the Foster Parent Handbook.