Welcome to Family Care’s Winter Newsletter where we reflect on the last few months and look ahead to Christmas and the year ahead.

Last month saw us bid a fond farewell to Julie Gibson who retired following a long career with Family Care. Julie will be missed by all and we wish her well.

On behalf of all the staff at Family Care I would like to thank you for all the wonderful support you continue to give Family Care throughout the year to enable us to continue making a difference to the lives of the children families and communities we work with.

We wish you a happy and peaceful Christmas and New Year.

Maureen McGrathInterim CEO Family Care

+ Introduction

+ Sphere Domestic Abuse

+ Spiral Bereavement

+ Spiral Volunteering

+ Fundraising and events

+ Adoption

In this issue:

p o s i t i v e l y s h a p i n g c h i l d r e n ’ s f u t u r e s

welcome

fam ly carenews

winter 2016

In November we said a fond farewell to Julie Gibson, Adoption Social Worker and Panel Adviser. Julie has achieved 20 years’ service with Family Care and during this time supported numerous adoptive families. She has successfully matched and placed many children that have experienced early life trauma and many moves, involving much loss and separation. With Julie’s ‘go that extra mile’ attitude she has helped families through extreme challenges, through her dedication and commitment.

We thoroughly enjoyed Julie’s retirement fuddle where many families and professionals came together to celebrate Julie’s success at Family Care and wish her all the best for her retirement; and share Julies’ excitement in being able to spend more quality and fun time with her family and enjoy her many hobbies and interests.

An adoptive family quoted:“Julie Gibson is an outstanding social worker and we have a great deal of trust and respect for her. She is warm, kind and easy to talk to, and exhibits a great deal of empathy without infringing on personal boundaries, but while also maintaining essential objectivity. She is extremely perceptive and has the ability to bring out people’s true feelings without the feeling of being interrogated or harassed.”

We also said farewell and good luck in the retirement of Pam Towers, who like Julie, has shown amazing commitment to many families over the past 11 years supporting therapeutic interventions to help develop family relationships and attachments. Family Care employees and many families enjoyed a lovely retirement farewell buffet and gave a huge thank you.

The Adoption Support Fund which was rolled out in 2015, provides local authorities with a central pot of money which they can access to provide therapeutic support to adopted children. Due to the amount of people who have applied to the fund a new fair access limit of £5,000 per application, per child has been introduced. The fund can be accessed for a range of therapeutic services that are identified to help achieve improved relationships with friends, family members, development in engagement with learning, support with emotional regulation and behaviour management and to help build confidence and the ability to enjoy a positive family life and social relationships.

We celebrated National Adoption Week 17-23 October and embraced the hashtag #SupportAdoption which recognised the need for support for all those whose lives have been touched by adoption.

Adoption

Lois and Jane from our adoption team supporting this year’s National Adoption Week

A Super Hero gift for our super hero Julie

Spiral Bereavement

Spiral has had a busy few months with referrals and we have made the decision to prioritise completion of those awaiting assessment. We continue to provide support and advice through our duty worker on a Monday and Thursday between 11am-1.30pm and our consultation times on a Tuesday morning have become increasingly more popular and can be booked in advance.

We would also like to say thank you to members of our PLACE support group who provided feedback on how else we can be supporting our families. We will be developing services to meet these requests and will be announcing some exciting new projects and support services in the New Year.

Adoption Sunday followed on closely from National Adoption Week on November 6th and was celebrated in churches across the UK. At St Mary’s Church in Edwinstowe Louise Casey and Karen Daley from Family Care attended and spoke at the morning service about the pathway into adoption and the lifelong support from Family Care to adoptive families. Home for Good continue in their partnership with Family Care and are looking to support Christian Family Care adopters to become Champions to make communication at Information Events consistent and clear in relation to the Pathway to Adoption. We are looking to host an evening for people interested in becoming a champion and existing champions with Home for Good. If you are interested in finding out more about this event please contact Sarah Castle sarah.castle@familycare-nottingham.org.uk who will update you with more information when it becomes available.

For adopters with pre-school children please remember regular coffee mornings are held close by to our offices which have been set up by a Family Care adopter. We know people enjoy the opportunity to meet other families and have a coffee and catch-up whilst children are able to play in the child friendly environment. If you would like further information on the next dates and the location please contact your Family Care Social Worker.

If you have adopted a child with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome you might be interested to know that a new support group has been sent up in Derby. The meetings are currently quarterly with the first two meetings in 2017 on 11th March and 10th June. Meetings are being held from 11am at Weston on Trent Village Hall, 47 Main Street, Weston on Trent Derby DE72 2BL. More information can be found on the FASD Trust’s website.

spiralsupporting children and families

• Spiral currently have seven volunteers befriending children and parents/carers. We have two newly trained volunteers waiting to be linked to befriending roles.

• Two of the team attended the GEM employee award dinner on 17th November which John Caulley, who facilitated Spiral’s Fun day, was shortlisted for.

• Our Volunteer Coordinator has recently attended a workshop about engaging businesses in corporate volunteering. There were some interesting ideas shared, which could be explored in the future when Spiral’s funding has been established.

• Spiral’s ANT’s and Articulate projects in partnership with NTU will be starting in January 2017. Spiral have met this year’s group of volunteers in November where we facilitated an introductory training session on bereavement and loss as preparation for the activity sessions that the children and young people access. It was lovely to meet previous volunteers as well as the new recruits and see the great energy and commitment from the students to ensure the children have a good time.

We held our 8th year celebration in October half-term. This was well attended with plenty of fun and games for the children. There was an array of fancy dress costumes to add to the atmosphere and great prizes were won in our free raffle. Everyone enjoyed the lovely party food and went home with a slice of birthday cake.

Thanks to Emily Rainbow, Holistic Wellbeing Therapist and Lush for volunteering their time in providing parents and carers with some pampering space. A choice of massage and reiki sessions were available which were thoroughly enjoyed.

Spiral’s Adult Counselling Sessions are the busiest they have ever been. The provision of this support to parents/carers has really complimented the team’s core support to children and their families. The counselling provision is thanks to the high quality individuals who are with us on placement from the Sherwood Psychotherapy Institute Training, parents/carers have been able to access ongoing counselling that through other services like GP’s would have been time limited.

Some of the quotes received about the counselling provided:

“It made me have time away from everyday life and really think things through”

“I wasn’t sure what I would get out of the sessions, but I found it helped loads talking things through with someone who I didn’t know and wouldn’t judge me”

“It made me realise a lot about myself, that it was perfectly normal, some of the feelings I was having”

“I built a great relationship up with my counsellor. She was really caring and helped me understand some of my worries and feelings”

Spiral Volunteering

We are delighted to report that we have once again been awarded funding from Children In Need for another three years, which started on 1st November. This grant is specifically to enable us to employ a children and young person’s practitioner half time and also allows some extra funding for family activities. We feel very privileged to have this funding again and are also grateful for the support and interest we have had from Dawn our link from BBC Children In Need who regularly visits our project and provides advice and

encouragement. From September two children’s practitioners joined Sphere for one day a week each. Christy has joined us to help Rob and Sally deliver the therapeutic work for our boys project, and Kim is helping Kam deliver therapeutic groups for the CAMHS team in Rushcliffe. We warmly welcome them to the team!

We have formed a positive relationship with Bikeworks, a charity based in Radford which renovates second hand bikes and delivers courses on bike maintenance. Over the summer, four of our teenagers were invited to a free four-morning ‘Build a Bike‘ workshop which was run and supervised by the Bikeworks team. In addition they have donated 10 bikes for children we work with and Ros attended a presentation (pictured below) of the bikes on 2nd November and (briefly) appeared on local television that evening, who covered the event.

Requests for referrals to Sphere for domestic abuse counselling and support continue to come in and this year we are seeing more requests from both City and County statutory children’s services as well as from Women’s Aid and CAMHS. Our work focuses on the children and on parent-child relationships, but we also now offer SMART (Supporting Mother After Recent Trauma), a support group for parents/carers, which is meeting approximately every two months. This group is open to all past and present users of our service and is starting to grow and flourish. The women who attend are shaping the group and choosing what they want from it in addition to being a place of support and understanding. In September they asked for some information on how to help their child with any sleep or eating issues. In November they asked for help with anxiety. We are also looking to them for some constructive feedback on the service Sphere provides for their children.

An exciting project we will be working on over the next few months stems from the Big Lottery ‘Building Capabilities’ Funding which was awarded to Sphere in March. As a result of this funding the management team has decided to commission a promotional film to raise the profile and understanding of the work of Family Care as a whole, but each team will be thinking about how they want to showcase their individual service. Watch this space!

Sphere Domestic Abuse

FeedbackThe aim of this newsletter is to give supporters of Family Care information about service developments, events and fundraising. We value any feedback you have on the format or content of this newsletter.

If you do not want to receive information on Family Care’s work, please email chris.burton@familycare-nottingham.org.uk or write to Chris Burton at our address.

t: 0115 960 3010 w: www.familycare-nottingham.org.uke: info@familycare-nottingham.org.uk

twitter.com/familycarenotts Family Care, 28 Magdala Road

Nottingham, NG3 5DF

Christmas Carol Service Unfortunately we had to cancel this year’s planned Christmas Carol Service. We hope that this is something we will be able continue in the future.

Circus Starr Family Care would like to say thank you to Circus Starr who have once again donated tickets for families across our service to attend their circus at Holme Pierrepoint. Here’s just some of the feedback we received from one of our families.

“Thank you so much for the Circus Starr tickets! We had the BEST time…”

fundraising & events

Pictured: Louise Casey accepting the cheque from Mapperley Open Gardens

Mapperley Park Open GardenA heartfelt thanks to all at Mapperley Open Gardens for donating £3,100 to Family Care from this year’s event.