Observations in Assessment

[nunny]

Hi everyone, please can anyone give me some advice. My husband and i are undergoing the Assessment for Fostering our 3 grandchildren. We only have access to the children once a month from picking up from school on Friday afternoon to Sunday lunch time. For part of our Assessment the SW wants to come round after school and watch us doing an activity with the children. From past experience with my own 4 children by Friday the children would be worn out and just want a drink and a biscuit. My grandchildren always come very excited so I am worried about getting them to calm down straight after picking them up to do an activity. Anybody got any comments on this. Ideally it would be preferable to be carried out on a Saturday when the children have had time to settle and unpack but unfortunately this cannot be arranged with the SW.

[David Roth]

Hi nunny, and welcome to the discussion forum

You are already being trusted to take the children for quite a long time at a stretch, which includes staying over with you for two consecutive nights, so it's unlikely that the local authority feel a lot of concern that you will do anything harmful to the children.

Watching you with the children is a fairly normal part of an assessment (though not everyone does get observed). It allows the social worker to see how you will be with the children in practice, and not just in theory. As Irene has said, they are unlikely to expect the children to be perfect - in fact they only get to see their grandparents once a month, so they're bound to be a bit excited. The social worker will be interested in how you manage their excitement and calm things down, and how you manage when there is three of them and just two of you. If these are things that you're used to doing, then the best thing to do is just act normally, and try to forget about the social worker with the notebook in the corner.

You could suggest that you'd welcome being observed on the Saturday as well, when things will be a bit calmer and more normal, but part of what the social worker will want to see is how you deal with it when the children are a bit excited. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to try to calm them down right away, but it will be a question of how you manage their excitement - how far do you let them go, what do you let them get away with, at what point do you say enough, how do you divert their excitement into other activities, etc. I'd suggest that you don't try to put on a show, just follow your normal routine with the children, as that is what they are used to, and doing something different could make them behave unpredictably as well.