Looked after children - Wishes and feelings
Wishes and feelings
While you are being looked after by social services there will be decisions made on your behalf by people who have been trained to help. The Children Act 1989 says that professionals must talk to you about why decisions have been made and must give you an opportunity to have your say. If you feel you are not being listened to or respected you should tell someone. Talk to your social worker or see my rights for information about other people who can help.
Whether or not you were involved in deciding what went in to your care plan, you should make sure you have a copy. Your care plan is important because it contains all the information about where you live, what support you need and how long you will need it for. For example if you are being looked after because you live with just your mum and she is in hospital, your care plan will say that you only need support from social services until she is well enough to look after you again. Other young people may have a care plan that shows all the care they will be getting until they are eighteen.
Your care plan must be looked at regularly to make sure it continues to be as helpful as possible and you will have review meetings to do this. These meetings are a chance for you to get together with the people who are important to you to talk about how you are getting on. The meetings should look at:
- why you are being looked after by social services
- what the arrangements are for your care
- how long those arrangements will be in place
The review is your meeting. You should know everyone at the meeting and it should be held somewhere you feel comfortable. The meeting will be run by an independent chair who is there to make sure your views are heard. You should have a chance to meet this person before the meeting and you can tell them if there are things you want discussed or people you want invited to or excluded from the meeting. Your social worker should arrange to see you before the meeting and will ask you to fill in a form to help you think about the things you like or don't like. You can look at this form here. Your social worker will also bring a report about how he or she thinks you are getting on and will make suggestions about what should happen in the future.
After the meeting decisions will be written down and everyone who took part will be given a copy. You should make sure you are happy with what has been agreed and keep your copy in a safe place. If your parents were not at the review meeting they will be sent a copy of the report so that they know what decisions have been made. The review chair will make sure decisions made at the meeting are followed up.
Your first two review meetings will be held within three months of you first becoming looked after. You will then have a meeting at least every six months.
If you are unhappy about the care you are getting you do not have to wait for a review meeting to talk to us about your worries. You can talk to your social worker any time or can ask the Children's Rights Officer or Young Person's Complaints Officer to help make sure your views are heard. See my rights for more information.
Information about you
You care plan, reports from your review meetings and notes written by your social worker or other professionals are all put in a file. The Data Protection Act (DDA)1998 is a piece of law that says you have a right to ask to see this file at any time (although you may not be allowed to see information in this file that talks about other people). The DDA also has very clear rules about keeping your information private. This means nobody except the people providing your care can see anything that has been written about you.
