Outcomes
Pyramid Care are both, innovative and creative, in ensuring the support our carers enables them to successfully meet the needs of children and young people we look after in achieving positive outcomes in key areas
Staying Safe
- Pyramid Care undertake extensive check on carers pre-approval and also checks other people having regular and close contact with placed children
- Unannounced visits will be made regularly
- Health & safety checks are rigorous and carers are jointly responsible to draw up their own safer caring and other policies
- Pyramid Care have 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, not only by the boundaries and routines but also to understand their responsibilities in all areas of safe guarding, including safe guarding themselves.
Carers are supported in all aspects of developing risk-assessments to ensure that children in their care are allowed the normal risk taking adventurous behaviours that children and young people engage in as part of healthy development.
Being Healthy
- Carers are also assessed for quality of lifestyle, incorporating good diet and access to exercise.
- 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 away from central living areas and children under five can’t be placed with them (this is partly because the effects of passive smoking are greater in younger children & because carers spend more time in close proximity to small children.)
Achieving and Enjoying
- Another criteria for selection of carers is their enjoyment of the company of, and activities with, children. Pyramid Care expect carers to help their placed children have a broad experience of activities and to pursue the ones they like, whether or not they have perceived talent
- Pyramid Care ask that carers encourage children to have lessons, e.g. in sport or music or the arts, to enhance their interest, develop friendship groups and promote their self-confidence
- Carers also share their own interests, as well as joining in with their child’s pursuit of an interest, so that there is a reciprocity which acknowledges the value of both the carer and the child and further stimulates the child’s capacity for attachment
- The Pyramid Care team work closely with placing authorities to ensure that children have the opportunity that is their right to embark on further education, or on any course leading to qualifications
- Whatever a child or young person achieves is celebrated, whether at a Pyramid Care panel, in team meetings or around the table in carers’ homes.
Making a Positive Contribution
- We encourage and celebrate our young people’s achievements during placement.
- Carers, with our help if necessary, try to find ways – when their children are ready – for them to engage with needs outside their own; this is not always possible, because of the profound trauma individual children may have suffered, but some children in longer-term care who have begun the journey to more satisfying relationships can begin to empathise with others and respond to their needs
Economic Well-Being
- Pyramid Care 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
- Pyramid Care seek 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
- Children and young people are encouraged to save using savings accounts and taught how to manage money by their carers. Pyramid Care also save £10 per month for each child placed.
- The Pyramid Care are able to provide financial assistance to help make the shift into independence as smooth as possible, giving care-leavers increased opportunities to join the labour market at the highest possible level
