Welcome to the May 2015 edition of the St Andrew`s Children`s

Reflections
Reflec
12
Newsletter of the St Andrew’s Children’s Society
May 2015
Welcome to the May 2015 edition of the
St Andrew’s Children’s Society newsletter,
Reflections12.
In this issue…
New Staff p2
Storytelling Event p3
The Sunshine Girls Group p3
Staff Development p4
Storyteller, Ailie Finlay returns.
Fundraising Report
p5
The Sunshine Girls have been hard at work, creating their Dragon
Island project.
Concurrent Planning
p6
Our Adoption Journey
from our online blog
p7
Who’s who at the Society
p8
We welcome Maria King, who joined our Aberdeen staff in March
– just in time to help with the move to the new office pictured
above.
The Staff Development Day at Pitlochry was not all hard work!
As the Edinburgh Marathon approaches, we have runners –
including ‘Running Sucks’.
We say thank you to funders who support our Aberdeen and
SafeBase™ projects, and to the Fourth Year girls from St Margaret’s
School for Girls, Aberdeen.
We introduce readers to our Concurrent Planning project.
While, on the back page, we have our “rogue’s gallery” – faces to
go with names at the Society.
www.standrews-children.org.uk
[email protected]
7 John’s Place, Edinburgh EH6 7EL
St Andrew’s Children’s Society
West Lodge, Greenwell Road, Aberdeen AB12 3AX
T: 0131 454 3370
Scottish Charity No. SC005754
T: 01224 289749
News
New Staff Member:
Maria King, Senior Practitioner
Prior to working in social work and social care I
was employed by a bank and undertook some
voluntary work with adults with learning disabilities.
This gave me enough experience to make the
move permanently and I’ve worked mainly in the
voluntary sector since I was in my early 20’s.
I began by working in residential, shared and
respite care supporting and looking after children
and adults who had complex needs and learning
disabilities and was also supported to complete my
social work training and so I qualified as a social
worker in 1999. I returned to university the following
year to complete my degree year and also started
working with families who were undertaking a
residential parenting assessment and then
providing outreach support in the community when
the parenting assessment was completed. From
there I developed and ran a project for young
carers working in a rural area and returned back to
working with parents and carers who were caring
for people with profound and multiple learning
disabilities and I organised workshops and
developed leisure activities in the community. In
2009 I moved to the local authority to work in
fostering and adoption services before making the
move to the Society in February.
In my ‘real’ life I’m a busy mum of three who, in
between providing a taxi service when ferrying my
children to various football games, scouts and
friend’s houses, I try to find time to read, walk and
go to the gym.
St Andrew’s Children’s Society & Scottish Attachment in Action Present
A Day with Dan Hughes PhD
SAIA and St Andrew’s Children’s Society are delighted
to welcome Dan Hughes PhD to present at our annual
conference.
Friday 25th September 2015
Hilton Aberdeen Treetops Hotel
161 Springfield Road
Aberdeen AB15 7AQ
10am to 4pm • Registration: 9.30am
(Lunch will be provided)
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Dan is the originator of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
(DDP) and also Attachment-Focused Family Therapy. He is an
internationally acclaimed therapist and author of ground-breaking
books on attachment and emotional recovery. Dan has integrated
recent research in the areas of neurobiology of trauma, early child
development and attachment theory, to produce a therapeutic
approach that assists adoptive parents, foster carers, kinship
carers and professionals to understand and effectively support the
healing of vulnerable children and young people.
Adoptive & Foster parents, Kinship carers
& SAIA members: £75.00
Social workers & other professionals / SAIA non-members:
£95.00
Booking form available from www.saia.org.uk
Sunshine Girls Group
The Sunshine Girls Group, which was established
to meet the needs of adopted girls aged from six to
nine years, has been running for just under nine
months. We now have a very lively and engaging
group of girls who attend regularly.
The girls all have a shared experience of being
adopted through the Society, and enjoy taking part
in a wide range of activities and interests while
developing their social skills and friendships. The
girls enjoy singing, arts and crafts, playing
Theraplay™ games, and generally having lots
of fun together. The girls also enjoy a quiet
time of relaxation at the end of the session,
so they are not too excited by the time mums
and dads arrive to collect them!
The girls worked beautifully together recently
to create Dragon Island. As you can see by the
photographs, Dragon Island is a very beautiful,
dangerous and lively place. The girls were very
imaginative and expressive in their work. The island
has an abundance of flowers, plants and wildlife,
with an array of colourful birds, butterflies and
starfish. The sea around Dragon Island contains
marauding sharks swimming alongside sparkling,
stripy fish. Dragon Island is, of course, inhabited by
a scary fire-breathing dragon, but also has a
ballerina, a rainbow, and even a Christmas tree!
We were very impressed with Dragon Island and the
way the girls worked together to produce such a
wonderful piece of work.
Gill, Constance and Sue
The Society is planning to have a
storytelling event on Friday 17th
July, in the afternoon with Ailie
Finlay. The times are 2pm and
3.30pm*.
Ailie’s storytelling had children
spellbound last year and we have
had many requests for her to
return. As last year, it will be a
picnic and storytelling event, with
families bringing their own picnic.
Storytelling Event
Please let us know if you will be
attending and how many children
you will bring. Contact Rita Grant
on 0131 454 3370
* Please note: if there is a big demand
for places, we can book an additional
11am slot. This will only happen if the
two afternoon slots are completely full
first.
Reflections12 3
Staff Development at Pitlochry
In 2013, The Crerar Hotels Trust made a very generous donation of
£10,000 towards the development of our services in Aberdeen. Their
generosity has been repeated in another beneficial way for the Society,
this time for the management and staff by way of a very generous
discounted rate at their hotel in Pitlochry.
On Tuesday 21st April, we all travelled up, by train
and by car, to Pitlochry and Scotland’s Hotel &
Spa, which was to be our afternoon, overnight and
morning venue for our spring development day.
Split into teams for the duration of our stay, our first
activity was a Treasure Hunt around the lovely town
of Pitlochry seeking answers to a wide series of
clues. In addition, there were a number of tasks
which had to be photographed. These included
recreating a window display (pictured top right).
There being six teams, Pitlochry didn’t know what
had hit it! Winners of the hunt were the team of
Anne MacLeod, Sally Street, Sarah Malone and
Dan Docwra, led by Marie Hindmarsh (pictured
bottom right).
Back at the hotel and down to a session by
Maureen McEvoy on the history of the Society and
how our role has evolved over the years and then
an insight into how the Trustees foresee our building
on our success for the future – some exciting food
for thought!
We enjoyed another team exercise before dinner.
All but one of the team were blindfolded and the
remaining team member had to guide their
colleagues to find a bottle of wine and a glass
(hidden in the room), open the wine one-handed,
pour into the glass and subsequently, into the
director’s mouth! Lots of cheating, but good fun. An
excellent dinner followed a session with a local
professional photographer to supply new staff
photographs for the web site – see the results on
the back page.
After breakfast and back into teams to look at the
current work of the Society and ways to improve our
performance and deliver better services to
adopters, children and families. The collective staff
minds have given a very useful mass of
suggestions for the future – watch this space!
After lunch, we departed sunny Pitlochry –
re‑energised.
4 Reflections12
Fundraising Report
“I have a far better understanding of
my daughter’s character and reasons for
her behaviour.”
This was a quote from one of our parents who
attended an early SafeBase™ Parenting
Programme course, which has become the flagship
of our after adoption support services. Quotes
such as this, and there are many, have made the
life of this fundraiser very much easier in
convincing trusts and foundations to support the
programme.
We have just received a third year of funding of
£40,275 from the Big Lottery’s Third Sector Early
Intervention Fund. Their support is dependent on
the successful outcomes of the programme and
there are many comments such as the one above
that enable me to report on continuing success.
Dunlevy and Greg Docherty from Motherwell, and
Graeme Marshall, a fireman from Hamilton. We
also have a team of four entering the Hairy Haggis
Relay. They are Rachel Goulding, Louise Clarke,
Jane Margiotta & Sabrina McKelvey – team name
‘Running Sucks’!
To help these intrepid runners raise funds for us,
why not sponsor them? Enter their name in the
‘Make a Donation’ box www.virginmoneygiving.com
– easy!
Not running, but talking about the Society, fourth
year pupils at St Margaret’s School for Girls in
Aberdeen have selected us as their charity to
represent to fellow pupils as part of the Youth
Philanthropy Initiative (YPI), in an attempt to win a
£3000 prize. Even if the girls don’t win, they have
But it’s not just SafeBase for which we receive
funding. The MacLennan Charitable Trust donated
£16,969 and The John Gordon Charitable Fund
gave £1,000, both towards our developing
Aberdeen services.
Other funding has been £2,000 from The Nancie
Massey Charitable Trust, £1,000 from The J K
Young Endowment Fund and £1,000 from Miss M
E Swinton Paterson’s Charitable Trust – all towards
our core costs.
Another welcome donation, just received, has
been £3,500 from John Timpson, CEO of Timpson
Shoe Repair. This is towards the joint SACS /SAIA
Conference in Aberdeen in September.
Other support for our work comes from a group of
runners who have entered the Edinburgh
Marathon. Three full marathon runners are James
decided to do some fundraising for our new
services in Aberdeen. Dan Docwra invited the girls
to our Aberdeen office, handed out T-shirts and
answered their questions about the charity. Good
luck girls…
Dan Docwra
& marketing
fundraising
STOP PRESS: We have just received £7,000
from BBC Children in Need, towards the costs of
alterations, equipment, toys and furniture for our
children’s area.
Reflections12 5
Concurrent Planning
A partnership
between the
Society & West
Lothian Council
What is concurrency?
• A care plan for young children (0-2 years)
where parents’ difficulties are severe and the
prognosis for rehabilitation is poor.
• Where the options of rehabilitation to family or
adoption are worked on concurrently and not
sequentially.
• Babies and young children are placed with
carers who are approved as foster carers and
adopters.
• Concurrent planning supports rehabilitation to
parents or family where this is possible; where it
is not, the plan becomes adoption with the
concurrent carer.
• The child does not move from temporary foster
care to an adoptive placement.
What are the benefits?
• The child has the best chance of staying in their
birth family if that is viable.
• Permanency decisions are made faster for
young children.
• The child’s care is consistent and does not
involved unnecessary placement moves and
care disruptions and their adopters get the
child at as early an age as possible.
• The child’s needs are put above those of the
birth parents or the adopters.
• Adopters have a real understanding of the birth
parents as people and the background of their
child that can be meaningfully used to promote
healthy family relationships as the child grows
and their understanding about their adopted
status develops.
6 Reflections12
What do Adopters need to consider?
• Could they work with a plan involving contact
for the child with its birth family when there is a
possibility, no matter how slim, that the child
might not be adopted by them?
• Could they give up work at short notice and be
at home for at least a year before considering a
return to work?
• Do they live within an hour’s drive of West
Lothian?
• Are they able to see that the needs of the child
must come before their need to be parents?
Image from iStockphoto.com
Our Adoption Journey
To celebrate LBGT Adoption Week 2-6 March
2015*, here is a blog written by same-sex adopters
about their adoption journey.
*originally published online March 2015
When I met my husband we very quickly
discovered we were both from big families (he
has three siblings and I’ve got two) and we
wanted to have a family of our own. We never
imagined we’d have children though as the
adoption process for a same-sex couple seemed
daunting and scary. Despite what we’d heard
about the lengthy and complicated adoption
process, we decided to go for it because it was
what we really wanted.
Our first conversation with a fostering and
adoption team was at our local authority and was
not positive. We were told that we did not meet
their criteria (we needed to have been living
together for at least three years) and they would
therefore not consider us. We did then kind of
give up for a while and focused on organising our
wedding instead. One day though, we spotted an
advert on the back of a bus for St Andrew’s
Children’s Society which was an adoption agency
new to Aberdeen and just setting up an office.
Our experience this time round was far more
positive. After expressing interest, we were
invited for an introduction where they asked
about our wishes and reasons to adopt and were
open and honest and encouraged us to believe
we could adopt. They did say that it is about
showing that we have a stable and enduring
relationship and that the law is pretty vague about
it, so it is up to the interviews and final report to
confirm and show that this is the case.
As early sign-ups to the new Aberdeen branch of
the Society, we were quickly assigned a social
worker and we began the home study straight
away. This felt a bit like therapy and we learnt a
lot about ourselves, each other and our dark
secrets. We sailed through this testing time with
flying colours and within 10 months of us
approaching the Society, we were approved as
prospective adopters of up to two children. We
went to an adoption exchange day in Dundee
within a month of being approved. Although this
was a daunting experience, it was nice to see
that we weren’t the only same-sex couple
attending and that all of the agency social
workers showed exactly the same interest in us
as prospective adopters as everyone else. On
that day we found the perfect match for us. We
had a great connection with our children’s social
worker, with whom we shared chocolate buttons,
which kind of sealed the deal. Ten days later we
got married and four months later the children
moved in.
At no point throughout the whole process did we
feel discriminated against for being a same-sex
couple. We felt as though we were treated exactly
the same way as any other prospective adopters.
It was a thoroughly rewarding and life-changing
experience. Within 18 months of beginning the
process, we got married and had two children.
We couldn’t have wished for more.
Blog posted by
adoption parent
To read this online, visit:
www.standrews-children.org.uk/news.php?id=291
For more news and views, visit:
www.standrews-children.org.uk/news
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Reflections12 7
Who’s who at the Society
Constance Bartley
Senior Practitioner
Dan Docwra
Fundraising &
Marketing
Sarah Goulding
Social Worker
Debbie MacDonald
Senior Practitioner
Carole Bell
Senior Practitioner
Ruth Dolan
Hilary Bulpit
Admin Assistant
Sue du Porto
Sylvia Buik
Denise Burgess
Senior Practitioner
Senior Practitioner
Charlie Egan
Shiona Freeman
Angie Gallagher
Senior Practitioner
Senior Practitioner
Senior Practitioner
Service Manager
Rita Grant
Christine Hamilton
Marie Hindmarsh
Ann MacLeod
Lorna MacFarlane
Adoption Support
Manager
Senior Practitioner
Senior Practitioner
Senior Practitioner
Senior Practitioner
& Aberdeen Team Leader
Katie Delap
Senior Practitioner
Service Manager
Senior Practitioner
Maria King
Sarah Malone
Maureen McEvoy
Gill McHaffie
Claire McMahon
Chair, Board of Trustees
Social Worker
Admin Assistant
Office Manager
Our friendly and
helpful staff can
assist you with your
enquiries.
Stephen Small
Director
Sally Street
Senior Practitioner
Cathryn Thompson
Senior Practitioner
Sandra Williams
Admin Assistant
www.standrews-children.org.uk
[email protected]
7 John’s Place, Edinburgh EH6 7EL
St Andrew’s Children’s Society
West Lodge, Greenwell Road, Aberdeen AB12 3AX
T: 0131 454 3370
Scottish Charity No. SC005754
T: 01224 289749