Our relationships with our brothers and sisters are potentially the most long-lasting of our lives. For children, full, half and step-siblings can provide comfort and reassurance as well as a crucial means of learning who they are by comparing themselves to important others. However, siblings can sometimes be a source of conflict and a barrier to emotional recovery from trauma. How can social workers take these complex variables into account whilst ensuring that any decision made about placing siblings is in the best interests of each child?
Ten Top Tips for Placing Siblings explores the different, often conflicting, principles involved in placing looked after brothers and sisters. Using a refreshingly child-centred approach this practical guide emphasises the importance of getting to know each individual child as well as considering the needs of the sibling group as a whole. Points to consider are presented throughout offering food for thought on a range of issues and appropriate action. Each of the ten chapters presents a basic tip in an accessible and straightforward style, while case studies are used to highlight what works and what does not. Issues covered include:
Keeping siblings together or helping them to part
Listening to each child and getting to know the sibling group
Using kinship care when placing siblings
Recruiting and preparing families for specific sibling groups
Supporting siblings and families after placement
Ten Top Tips for Placing Siblings is the fourth title in BAAF s Ten Top Tips series. The series tackles some fundamental topics in adoption and fostering with the aim of presenting them in a quick reference format, useful for newly qualified social workers. Established practitioners will be able to use Ten Top Tips to reinforce their practice as well as a prompt for further thought and exploration.
Hedi Argent, an independent family placement consultant, trainer and freelance writer, has written numerous titles for BAAF including Related by Adoption (BAAF 2004), One of the Family (BAAF, 2005) and Ten Top Tips for Placing Children in Families (BAAF 2006).