Meeting the Five Outcomes

Capstone Vision has been proactive and innovative in meeting the demands of the Five Outcomes, designing ways of enhancing good practice and then sensitively monitoring how carers implement them.

All carers write their monthly reports using a template which has been mapped to the Five Outcomes.

Being healthy

Carers are assessed using the Form F process to determine their capacity for offering themselves as a secure attachment figure to a child in their care
Carers are also assessed for quality of lifestyle, incorporating good diet and access to exercise. We encourage an awareness of substances that could cause difficulties for children eg additives
Carers try to find some physical activity that children placed with them can access and enjoy
Young people are discouraged from smoking. Carers who smoke do so outside of the family home.
Where appropriate, Capstone Vision will arrange for skilled therapists to work with the child or young person. Where the impact of trauma is extensive, young people placed tend to have some health issues. Whatever programme of work is set up, it’s accomplished in partnership with carers. Carers are consulted in every aspect of the therapeutic process.

Staying safe

Capstone Vision undertakes extensive checks on carers pre-approval and also checks other people having regular and close contact with placed children
Unannounced visits are made from time to time
Health & safety checks are rigorous and carers are required to draw up their own safer caring and other policies
Capstone Vision has a clear policy on bullying and robust procedures about restraint, children going missing and child protection
Training focuses on the need for carers to ensure the safety of children placed with them. This is achieved not only by the boundaries carers put in place for the child but also by the way in which carers safeguard themselves from being injured by an oppositional child and by carers learning how to reduce the emotional temperature around a child or young person on the verge of kicking off
Carers are taught how to do their own risk-assessments so that children in their care are not discouraged from the sort of normal risk-taking adventurous behaviours that children and young people engage in as part of healthy development

Making a positive contribution

We encourage and celebrate our young people’s achievements during and beyond placement and when appropriate we advertise and share such achievents in our regular newsletter
We seek to model, for both carers and children, the value system that we promote through training and through our interactions with them.
We sponsored two British foster children to visit our affiliated I.B. School in India in 2008. This was an experience of a lifetime for them!
Every month one lucky Capstone Vision foster child is chosen to receive a £200 grant. This is used to help support a special need or special talent for that child.

Economic well-being

Capstone Vision carers receive an allowance that reflects the important and skilled work they do and enables them to have a comfortable lifestyle which encourages placed children to aspire to a similar one for themselves in independence
Capstone Vision seeks to ensure that carers’ financial security impacts on children by offering them an extended range of ways in which they can develop and express their individual identity
Capstone Vision carers and social workers work hard at building relationships with schools and encouraging children to reach their potential and gain qualifications
Capstone Vision carers are encouraged to spend time with young people in teaching them how to manage money.

Enjoying and achieving