From ‘Stable Homes Built on Love’ to ‘Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive’, successive governments have focussed on keeping children out of the care system. Conversely, there has been far less emphasis on the value and importance of working towards reunifying children with their birth parents after a period of separation.
When children have been removed from the care of their parents, practitioners are charged with making difficult and life-changing judgements about the possibility of reunification. Is there a realistic possibility that the child can return home? What would need to change for them to safely return?
At the same time, parents and families are also juggling uncertainty, expectation, anxiety and fear, whilst navigating the pressures from the system. The result is an emotionally charged, complex process for everyone involved.
This webinar will explore how judgements in the process are made and ask challenging questions about what is being asked of practitioners and birth parents who are on the reunification journey together.
Bringing lived experience into conversation with professional and practice perspectives, this webinar will explore what is at stake throughout the reunification journey. It will create space to think about risk, judgement, relationships, power and responsibility; how assumptions and different understandings of family life may shape decision-making; and how professionals can work with honesty, integrity and humanity while carrying the considerable weight of the decisions they are required to make.
