New CHARMS™ Customer - The Bettermeant Group

News ID: 696

Welcome to our newest CHARMS™ customer, The Bettermeant Group.
 
East Midlands based The Bettermeant Group provide residential care to vulnerable young people. In their own words, "The Bettermeant Group is on a mission to continue on a life-affirming journey that builds on providing richness of morals, skills, pedagogy in all of the various forms to young people."

To find out more about their services please visit  https://www.thebettermeantgroup.com/

14/06/2023

FFTA 37th Annual Conference

News ID: 695

We're excited to announce that CHARMS™, the secure online case management system for child welfare, will have a booth at the Family Focused Treatment Association (FFTA) conference taking place in Columbus, Ohio 10th - 13th July 2023!
 
https://www.ffta.org/page/Conference23
 
For more info or to arrange a remote, informal demonstration of CHARMS™, please feel free to contact our US Coordinator, Alicia Gibson on:
Tel: 480-884-1757
Cell: 805-722-7703
Email: alicia.gibson@socialcarenetwork.com
 
More details are to follow soon and we look forward to meeting you at our booth!

05/06/2023

New CHARMS™ Customer - CFS Care

News ID: 694

Welcome to new CHARMS™ customer CFS Care!
 
CFS Care provider of care services for vulnerable young people across the North West of England across 3 core areas - fostering, supported accomodation, and residential care.
 
To find out more about their services visit https://www.cfscare.co.uk/

23/05/2023

New CHARMS™ Customer - Tutis Foster Care

News ID: 693

A very warm welcome to our newest CHARMS™ customer, Tutis Foster Care.

Established in 2015, Tutis Foster Care is an independent fostering agency based in Whitehaven, Cumbria. To find out more about their service you can visit their website: http://tutisfostercare.com/

17/05/2023

Response from Social Care Network (SCN) to the study entitled 'Care leavers’ transition into the labour market in England'.

News ID: 692

Social Care Network ('SCN'), providers of the widely used CHARMS™ system, works with more than 300 registered independent children's services providers across Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, The Republic of Ireland and Scotland. More than 250 independent fostering agencies use CHARMS™, securely, online to manage all aspects of recruitment, assessment, training and approval of foster carers, and thereafter to enable all stakeholders to keep records, securely, on the progress of the children and young people they support.
 
Many of the largest children's residential providers also use CHARMS™, and with the new regulations with regard to supported accommodation an increasing number of organisations who provide semi-independence housing are also joining the CHARMS™ family.
 
We at SCN see therefore, as we support our user community, how young people leaving care can struggle to access employment.
 
Given that CHARMS™ is also used by a number of supported employment agencies across the UK, we are also ideally placed to see the opportunities for children's services and supported employment providers to work together make the path from the transition into adulthood slightly easier. Or as the authors of the study say, in their executive summary:
 
'The purpose of our study was therefore to explore risk and protective factors for care leavers as they enter early adulthood and begin their employment journeys. Studies of young people suggest that deprivation, low qualifications and disability are strongly associated with being NEET, alongside parenthood, offending and mental health issues. Care leavers have a greater likelihood of appearing in all these groups, partly explaining their high propensity to be  NEET. However, specific factors associated with care may also be salient, including type and stability of placements and the forms of support offered by the state.'
 
Also in the executive summary of the study  'Care leavers’ transition into the labour market in England' (https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CareLeaversLabourMarket.pdf) we are told:
 
'Relatively little is known about the factors that impact pathways into employment for care leavers. Existing knowledge tends to come from small-scale qualitative studies and those focused on education outcomes. These have suggested that care leavers often face precarious employment conditions in marginal or insecure jobs, magnifying the realities of the prevailing youth labour market. Many of them can find themselves under considerable pressure to take work with limited prospects to meet essential costs in the absence of family safety nets. It is also, however,  important to recognise that many care leavers do make positive adult transitions – for example, around 13% currently access higher education by the age of 19.'
 
SCN is engaging with Laura Davis, the Chief Executive of the British Association for Supported Employment ('BASE' https://www.base-uk.org/home), to look at ways of bringing together children's services providers with supported employment agencies to address the employment barriers faced by young people leaving care.

09/05/2023

Spotlight on Supported Internships - Free Webinar

News ID: 691

On Thursday 18th May the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTI) are hosting a free webinar, 'Spotlight on Supported Internships', for parents and carers of young people preparing for adult life.
 
For more information and to book your place please visit NDTI’s website: https://www.ndti.org.uk/news/webinar-spotlight-on-supported-internships

02/05/2023

New CHARMS™ Customer - One Adoption South Yorkshire

News ID: 689

Welcome to new CHARMS™ customer One Adoption South Yorkshire!
 
One Adoption South Yorkshire are made up of the adoption services at Barnsley Council, Doncaster Council, Rotherham Council and Sheffield City Council, working together to provide adoption services across South Yorkshire.
 
To find out more about the services One Adoption South Yorkshire provide, please check out their website https://www.oneadoption.co.uk/about-us/south-yorkshire

26/04/2023

CHARMS™ USA

News ID: 688

We've expanded the Social Care Network Solutions family and have a new company in the USA, based in Scottsdale, AZ, which has been set up to provide our secure CHARMS™ system to child welfare agencies in the USA.
 
CHARMS™ was created in 1999 in the UK and is now used by more than 300 fostering and adoption agencies across the UK and Ireland. CHARMS™ provides a secure, case management platform for everything that a fostering and adoption agency does. Some 20,000 foster families use CHARMS™ to share information about the children they look after with their agencies and with their local authorities - the equivalent of State authorities in the US.
 
For over two decades CHARMS™ has enabled foster care communities to have information quickly and easily to local and national governmental agencies. The reporting requirements on foster care agencies in the UK and Ireland are much the same as the requirements in the USA. The CHARMS™ team are experts in helping the foster care and adoption community to keep records safe and accurate and to extract information when needed.  As we are dedicated to helping children find loving homes.
If you would like more information or to arrange a remote, informal demonstration of CHARMS™, please feel free to contact Alicia Gibson our US Coordinator on the details below:

Tel: 480-884-1757
Mob: 805-722-7703
Email: alicia.gibson@socialcarenetwork.com
 
As a corporate sponsor of the Family Focused Treatment Association (FFTA) we are attending the 2023 FFTA conference in Columbus, Ohio and it would be great to see you there too!

25/04/2023

New CHARMS™ Customer - Swindon Borough Council

News ID: 690

A very warm welcome to our newest CHARMS™ customer, Swindon Borough Council.
 
To find out about fostering with Swindon council please visit their website https://www.swindon.gov.uk/info/20115/fostering_a_child

21/04/2023

Apr 2023 - Guide To Supported Accommodation Regulations

News ID: 687

On 23/3/2023 the Department For Education published the Guide to the Supported Accommodation Regulations including Quality Standards.
 
The Government consultation response set down the next steps as follow: "Ofsted will begin registering providers from 28 April 2023. The Regulations and guidance must be complied with for the purposes of registration and as soon as providers and managers are registered with Ofsted. If a complete application for registration with Ofsted has not been made before 28 October 2023, it will be an offence to carry on or manage a supported accommodation service on or after that date".
 
And in the recently published Guide "Regulation 24 details the records that must be kept in supported accommodation. All young people’s case records must be kept up to date and stored securely whilst they remain in the setting. Case records must be kept up-to-date and signed and dated by the author of each entry. Young people’s case records must be kept for 75 years from the date of birth of the child, or if the child dies before the age of 18, for 15 years from the date of his or her death".
 
CHARMS offers a complete, online solution for all supported accommodation and semi-independence providers to keep their records secure, as prescribed by Regulation 24. If you would like to find out more please call 0161 237 1872 or email info@socialcarenetwork.com.

01/04/2023