Children and young people in care often have complex family dynamics. Many have reported that truly getting to know them needs to involve taking genuine interest in their pasts and families – particularly their siblings.
CREATE Foundation, the peak body for those with a care experience, has collaborated with young people to create Sibling Connection: A Practice Guide for Caseworkers and Carers. The guide lays out six steps for building connection:
- Get to know me
- Fully listen
- Take on what I say
- Think about how I feel
- Tell me what’s going on
- Care about my family.
The guide has practical tips, prompts to help you reflect and links to resources, such as podcasts.
Understanding family
Knowing who your child or young person considers to be a sibling is an important part of learning what ‘family’ means to them. Their list might include:
- birth siblings
- foster siblings
- step siblings
- residential care siblings
- cousins
- other family members.
Download the Sibling Connection Practice Guide at bit.ly/createsiblingconnection
This story is part of Issue 12 of Caring Together, the Department for Child Protection's newsletter for foster and kinship carers. The entire newsletter, and previous editions, are available here.