Effective support for parents during care proceedings and contact: Learning from lived experience
Effective support for parents during care proceedings and contact: Learning from lived experience
Delivered online using Teams
10:00 - 11:30 Wednesday, 29 October 2025
Audience
This session is aimed at advocates and others working with parents with learning disabilities or difficulties during care proceedings. Also, adult’s and children’s social workers, children’s guardians, independent reviewing officers and family time workers.
Overview
Learning how to care for a new baby is hard for all parents. If parent and baby have only a few hours together each week due to foster care arrangements, it can feel overwhelming. Especially during care proceedings where visits may affect decisions about whether a child will come home or see their mum or dad regularly as they grow up.
The support provided to parents during child contact is key to ensuring that every child has a fair chance to grow up in their family of origin. Or maintain regular contact with their parents where it may not be possible to live with them.
In this open access webinar, we will focus on the stories of parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties. You will hear what parents want social workers and contact supervisors to know about what it is like to be them. You will also explore what ‘reasonable adjustments’ mean.
Our speaker, Polly Baynes, draws on her extensive practice experience and her PhD research into parents’ experiences of visiting their children in care. The session will explore the importance of supporting parents to:
- Build a relationship with their child.
- Cope with the loss of their child where they were no longer able to care for them.
- Create a new parenting identity.
Working Together with Parents Network
This webinar is led by the Working Together with Parents Network. The free network is for professionals from adults and children’s social care, education, health, legal and independent advocacy sectors working with parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties.
Learning outcomes
Following the session, participants will be able to:
- Understand the lived experiences of parents with learning disabilities during care proceedings and contact, including the emotional and practical challenges they face.
- Identify key factors that support or hinder parenting skill development during contact sessions, particularly within the context of limited supervised time with their children.
- Explore the concept of 'reasonable adjustments' in the context of supervised contact, and how these can be applied in practice to support parents fairly.
- Reflect on their own practice and attitudes towards working with parents with learning disabilities and consider changes they can make to improve outcomes for these families.
- Gain insights into how professionals can support the creation of new parenting identities for parents who are no longer primary carers.
Audience Types
Commissioners
People with lived experience and their families
Policy makers
Practitioners
Principal Social Worker (PSW)
Residential / care home workers
Senior leaders
Senior practitioners
Social workers
Strategic leads
Team leaders
Workforce development teams
Professional Standards
PQS:KSS - Child and family assessment | The law and the family and youth justice systems | Relationships and effective direct work | Lead and govern excellent practice | Promote and govern excellent practice | Shaping and influencing the practice system | Confident analysis and decision-making | Creating a context for excellent practice | Designing a system to support effective practice | Developing excellent practitioners | Support effective decision-making | The role of social workers | Person-centred practice | Safeguarding | Mental capacity | Professional ethics and leadership | Direct work with individuals and families | Values and ethics | Developing confident and capable social workers | Assuring good social work practice and development | Promoting and supporting critical analysis and decision-making | Influencing and governing practice excellence within the organisation and community
CQC - Responsive | Well-led
PCF - Values and ethics | Diversity and equality | Rights, justice and economic wellbeing