Staying together and connected: getting it right for sisters and brothers: national practice guidance

Acknowledgements

It would not have been possible to develop this practice guidance without the generous input of so many skilled, dedicated and passionate individuals, groups and organisations. The authors would like to thank each contributor to the planning, development and drafting of what we believe is a valuable tool in supporting the relationships of brothers and sisters with experience of care.

Thank you to all the members and contributors to the National Advisory Group^[1] supporting this work, whose insight, observations and suggestions have been invaluable. Your range of perspectives, together with your shared and obvious commitment to work together across all areas of policy and practice can only result in better experiences for brothers and sisters.

To every child and young person who has shared your views with us, thank you. We could not be more grateful. It is by listening to you that real change happens. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to learn. A special thank you too to the children and young people who shared your views through local authority submissions, and to the Care Inspectorate Young Inspection Volunteers and members of Our Hearings Our Voice (the independent board for children and young people who have experience of the Children's Hearings System) for your thoughtfulness, time, energy and wisdom.

We are incredibly grateful to our Consultants Group, who have brought their time, wisdom, skill and experience to this work, and are informed by their own experiences of care. Their phenomenal capacity to understand, analyse and offer solutions within the complexity of planning and decision-making, together with their unwavering commitment to ensure the rights of every single child and young person with care experience are upheld, has been truly outstanding.

Deep thanks to the Stand Up For Siblings coalition, collaborative pioneers of this work, and ever a voice of reason, treasured critical friend and fierce advocate for the rights of brothers and sisters.

Thank you to our friends and colleagues at AFA and CoramBAAF, who have gone above and beyond to help us access vital resources and texts to inform this work.

To the practitioners across the workforce who contributed to our survey, shared examples of practice, shared your wisdom through our workshops, or contributed your rich experience in other ways: thank you. Your practice inspires us, and your insights and ideas have helped us to develop a tool we sincerely hope is helpful to your practice.

We are so thankful to the parents, including adoptive parents, kinship and foster carers who shared your experiences with us. Sometimes these were joyful, sometimes incredibly painful, and we appreciate and learned from every single one.

Finally, to a true champion for brothers and sisters, Dr. Chris Jones. Thank you for your enthusiasm, leadership and dedication to advocating for the rights of sisters and brothers with care experience: for driving change, and truly making it happen.

The language used in this guidance

This document seeks to offer practical guidance and suggestions to promote best practice for practitioners and organisations who are responsible for maintaining and promoting positive relationships between brothers and/or sisters in situations where a child or children are being cared for under legislation to keep them safe. For the guidance to do this, in some places it is necessary to use the exact language used in the legislation. However, this language isn't always used in everyday conversation, and so here we explain what some terms mean and why these are used here.

Siblings is the word used in the Children (Scotland) Act 2020 and the relevant Regulations this guidance refers to. It refers to the relationship where two or more children have one or both parents in common, or where they have lived together and have an ongoing relationship which is like this. This is also referred to in the guidance as sibling-like. Where possible in this guidance, brothers and/or sisters has been used. It should also be noted that children should be asked how they wish to be referred to. They may wish to use the word sibling as a non gender-specific word.

Looked after and looked after child are the terms used in current legislation to refer to a child or young person with care and protection needs who is cared for under a formal arrangement with a local authority. Children who are looked after are either 'looked after at home' (living with a parent in their home) or 'looked after away from home', for example by kinship carers, foster carers or residential care.

Placement is the word used in legislation to refer to the place where a child is being cared for away from the care of their parents.

Parents refers to biological, birth, adoptive parents and parents by virtue of provisions about human fertilisation, such as same-sex parents who have agreed to be parents.

Biological parent is the term used in legislation to refer to the genetic relationship between a person and their child.

Birth parent is the term used in legislation to refer to the person who has the legal rights and responsibilities for a child when they are born.

Adoptive parent is the term used in legislation to refer to a person who adopts a child through a legal process which fully transfers parental responsibility from the child's birth parents to them and they bring the child up as their own.

Carers refers to anyone over the age of sixteen who is providing care for a child either formally (having an order through the court or a children's hearing) or informally (no order from a court or a children's hearing). A carer who does not have parental rights and responsibilities is still responsible for doing all that is reasonable to safeguard the child's health, development and welfare.

Corporate parent is the term used in Scotland to refer to organisations (and individuals who work for them) who have a legal duty to respond to and support the care and protection needs of all children and young people. Their duties are laid out in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014.

Contact is the term used in legislation to refer to formal arrangements made for when children in need of care and protection spend time with important people in their lives who they are not living with at that time.

The Team Around the Child is the name given to a group of people who come together to respond to the care and protection needs of a child. This includes family members, carers, teachers, social workers, health and early years professionals and, in relation to this guidance, any other professionals involved in the child's care with whom the child may share their views on the relationships with their brothers and sisters.

National Advisory Group Members

• The Adoption and Fostering Alliance (AFA) Scotland
• Care Inspectorate
• Centre for Excellence for Children's Care and Protection (CELCIS)
• Children's Hearings Scotland (CHS)
• Child Protection Committees Scotland (CPCS)
• Clan Childlaw
• Coalition of Childcare Service Providers (CCPS)
• The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)
• Scottish Association of Social Work (SASW)
• Scottish Children's Reporters Administration (SCRA)
• Scottish Government
• Siblings Reunited (STAR)
• Social Work Scotland
• Stand Up For Siblings (SUFS)/University of Strathclyde
• The Fostering Network in Scotland (TFN)
• The Promise Scotland
• Who Cares? Scotland