Notice of medical appointments

[Peter pan 123]

Please help or advise me.
Both my children are in foster care and have medical conditions, we found out yesterday that my youngest daughter (who has fitted) has an appointment today at a hospital ( we do not know which hospital) to discuss her.medical condition and to look for facisal characteristics that may define a condition.

From very scetchy information that we can gather this was booked over s week ago.

My question is: do we have a right to question why we were not informed earlier and do we have a right to immediate feedback? Our next contact is on Thursday.

I have spoken to my solicitor he seems to be more interested in what the appointment was about rather than my actual concerns of lack of communication

Peter Pan 123

[lostandconfused]

I know with my child that they would do appointments and things, and inform me afterwards. Sometimes there would be nothing to report, other than being that they had an appointment, where all was fine. So i don't think it was high priority to inform me. Id guess there was appointments I wasn't even aware of.

However, you can ask why you were not informed and let them know that you would much prefer to know of these things beforehand, rather than after if that is possible. If not possible, then why not

As for a right to immediate feedback, I'm not 100% certain of but I'd think someone from FRG will be more up to scratch on that.
My experience of having shared PR though - it seemed it was between me and the carers. If I stated that I wanted to know of these things, then they made sure that I was informed.
More often than not, I'd call them for an update before they even had a chance to call me.

I dont know if there is a difference between care home staff and Foster carers when it comes to calling for updates, but I'd imagine it should be fairly similar.

[Peter pan 123]

Hi, thank you for your reply, we know that the foster carer has our phone numbers, both my wife's and mine but she seems to lose it when something happens two weeks ago my eldest who is also in her care had a flare up of her JIA over the weekend, the FC did not ring us or the out of hours team.
Surely this is a legal requirement, muchthe same that we would have to inform children's services of an incidentif the girls were home?

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Peter Pan 123

Welcome to the Family Rights Group (FRG) parents’ discussion board and thank you for your post. I am sorry that I was not able to respond to your post sooner.

I can see that your children are in foster care, I think you are in current care proceedings and you are worried about your daughters’ medial needs/ appointments which you are not being informed about in a timely way. I can understand how distressing this must be for you especially if one of the children has a flare up of an existing health issue or where appointments are taking place as part of a fuller diagnosis of your daughter’s medical condition.

You are a parent with parental responsibility and share this with children’s services if they have an interim care order although they are the main decision-makers.

In answer to your question about whether you have a right to ask why you were not told sooner about a planned appointment for your child - you do have a right to ask. It might be worth your while setting out in writing (by email or letter) to the social worker, their manager and the children’s Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) that finding out late about health appointments or incidences for your children causes you unnecessary distress. You can formally ask both the social worker and the foster carer (who has delegated responsibility for everyday matters) to make a point of letting you know, as soon as reasonably possible, when an appointment is made and to give you an update as soon as they reasonably can after an appointment or hospital attendance. I don’t think you can ask for immediate feedback though in most situations. Foster carers should certainly document any health crises.

Decisions about what decisions and arrangements the foster carer can make under their delegated authority should be recorded in the children’s placement plan and their care plan should set out how the children’s health needs will be assessed and met. The LAC review chaired by the IRO should monitor how all aspects of the children’s care plans are being carried out so keeping the IRO informed of any issues is a good idea.

Your solicitor may be particularly interested in what your daughter’s hospital appointment was about if the children’s health needs, how they present and how you manage them are relevant to the care proceedings or your ability to meet the children’s needs.

I hope this is helpful and that you are kept properly informed about your children’s health and wellbeing.

With best wishes

Suzie