Facilitating Contact with Birth Families

(This fun image can be found at Family T-Shirts)

Building practical skills, confidence, and anti-discriminatory practice to support looked-after children through family contact.

Facilitating contact between looked-after children and their birth families is one of the most vital and demanding responsibilities a carer or residential worker holds. Contact maintains a child’s connection to who they are, their heritage, and their sense of identity. Done well, it can be transformative for emotional wellbeing and placement stability; done without adequate strategy, it can trigger distress and confusion.

This practical professional development course equips carers and residential child care workers with the observational tools, boundary-setting techniques, and reflective frameworks needed to navigate contact thoughtfully and effectively.

Key Learning Highlights

• Understanding the Aims & Types of Contact: Explore the legal frameworks (Children Act 1989) and care planning purposes behind direct, indirect, sibling, and virtual contact.
• Holding “Two Families in Mind”: Learn how to help children navigate loyalty conflicts, giving them permission to love their birth family while feeling safe in their placement.
• The “Critical Window” (Pre & Post-Contact): Master preparation strategies, age-appropriate language, and post-visit decompression routines that help children re-regulate.
• Communicating with Birth Parents: Develop professional empathy and boundary-setting skills to manage complex adult dynamics respectfully and reduce friction.
• Professional Curiosity & Impact Assessment: Learn to observe, record, and evaluate behavioural, emotional, and physical indicators across early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence.
• Managing Common Challenges: Build concrete toolkits to respond to contact refusals, post-contact distress, unsanctioned social media contact, and unsafe parent behaviour.
• Anti-Discriminatory & Culturally Affirming Practice: Utilise contact as a bridge to a child’s cultural heritage, language, faith, and racial identity while adapting for disabilities or LGBTQ+ considerations.

Why Choose This Course?

Designed around real-world scenarios and peer-supported reflection, this course translates complex legal requirements and emotional dynamics into daily caregiving habits. It equips you to turn every contact visit into a safe, structured opportunity for a child to understand their story, build resilience, and thrive.

Who Should Attend: Foster Carers, Kinship Carers, Residential Child Care Workers (RCCWs), Supervising Social Workers, and Placement Support Staff.

Format: This is a live training session through Zoom. It includes taught sections, small group work, work in pairs, and whole group discussions.

Hand-outs & Certificates: Downloadable course notes and certificates of attendance are provided.