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  1. Fostering and Adoption
  2. What the Family Placement Team Do

What the Family Placement Team Do

Family Placement Team social workers are happy to offer fuller information about fostering either on the telephone, by email, or by visiting you at home.

Fostering - what do we do?

We are a team of qualified social workers. We provide preparation training for people interested in fostering. We make assessments of people who apply to become foster carers. We also offer a number of supports to foster carers, such as:

  • Support from an allocated supervising social worker for them and their families
  • Preparation before a child is placed (i.e. background and historical information about the child or young person and their family circumstances)
  • Ongoing training on a wide variety of topics
  • Planning and support alongside the child's social worker
  • Out of hours support from the Social Care Emergency Team (SCET)
  • Payments for their work as a carer and to cover the costs of caring for a child
  • Group support and the opportunity to meet up regularly with other carers
  • A 'buddy' service where new carers are linked to an experienced carer for support and guidance
  • Group support for their own young children
  • West Lothian Council's Family Placement Team is a registered fostering agency.  We comply with the National Standards for Foster Care and Family Placement Services.
  • We are regularly inspected by the Care Inspectorate.

We are committed to ensuring that our carers, our children and young people and our partner agencies participate in the ongoing development of our service.

"I would say to anyone thinking about fostering to definitely give it a go... you will not be on your own. You will be part of a team of people who are always on hand to give guidance and support."

Feedback

We welcome your feedback, whether this is to tell us we are doing a good job or to let us know about things we need to improve. You can provide your feedback using our feedback form [115KB] .

Complaints

The council has a complaints procedure that you can use if you are unhappy about some aspect of the service you have received. Get further information on Complaints.

Alternatively, you may contact the Care Inspectorate who have a responsibility for registering and inspecting our fostering service and who have a complaints procedure that can be accessed by people using or wishing to use the service.  Their details are listed below.

Care Inspectorate,
Stuart House,
Eskmills,
Musselburgh,
East Lothian,
EH21 7PB. 
Tel: 0845 600 9527. 
Email: enquiries@scws.com 
Web:  Care Inspectorate website (opens new window)