• establishing a code of ethics for the fostering profession
  
• establishing standards of professional performance and conduct
  
• determining minimum standards for registration
  
• determining policy for processing of applications for registration
  
• processing of criminal record checks
  
• verification of qualifications
  
• assuring English language competence
  
• assuring an awareness of cultural differences
  
• determining policy to facilitate the registration of foster parents from different districts and countries
  
• determining policy for the accreditation of overseas qualifications
  
• determining the kind and amount of professional development required for continuing registration, by category of foster parent
  
• determining policy for the conduct of investigations and hearings.
  

Foster Parent Registration Authority Hearings Tribunal
The task of the proposed Foster Parent Registration Authority Hearings Tribunal would be to hear and determine matters of foster parent discipline within the framework of standards and ethics prescribed by the Foster Parent Registration Authority, having regard to matters of law. The Tribunal will be the final arbiter in matters brought before it. The three members of the Tribunal would be appointed by the Minister and would include a person with the qualifications to be appointed as a judge, as President. Members of the Tribunal would be precluded from concurrently serving as members of the Board. Tenure for Tribunal members and the President would be for a period of three years.

Registrar:
The Registrar would be the chief executive officer and general manager of the proposed New Zealand Foster Parent Registration Authority. The Registrar would report to the Board and would operate within the framework of Board policy and the determinations of the Tribunal. The Registrar will be an ex-officio member of the Board. The Registrar would advise the Board on the development of policy in all matters relating to foster parent registration. The Registrar’s role would include liaison with foster parent training institutions and the implementation of Board policy about qualification requirements for registration.

Registration Branch
The task of registering and maintaining the registration of New Zealand foster parents within the framework of Board policy would be the responsibility of the Registrar, through the Registration Branch. This would include criminal record checks, verification of qualifications, conducting interviews to determine suitability, and monitoring and verification of professional development. Individual cases for which there is no existing policy would be taken to the Board by the Registrar for determination.
The proposal for a Foster Parent Registration Authority might also include responsibility for undertaking full probity checks for all foster parents in all agencies, government and non-government, without exception.
Further, it may be necessary for all non-fostering staff in all agencies to be subject to full probity checks by the Foster Parent Registration Authority or some other appropriate body. Such a checking system should be fully integrated into a whole-of-government probity checking system, given that there is significant mobility between fostering and other related fields, such as community services and health care. This would be taken into account by the Government if foster parent registration was agreed to.

Investigations Branch
The investigation of incompetent fostering and improper conduct, as defined by Board policy, would be undertaken by the Registrar through the Investigations Branch. The investigative staff would all be trained specialists independent of any employing authority. It is anticipated that investigative case work would deal primarily with referrals concerning alleged incompetence as a foster parent. However, the branch would also fulfil the function of the case management unit in so far as that unit deals with allegations of improper conduct. The branch’s tasks would include investigation, liaison with other agencies, maintenance of a data base and maintenance of the not-to-be-employed list for all agencies.

Procedure for handling allegations of foster parent incompetence
In the proposal, the employer of a foster parent whose competence is in question would write to the Registrar of the Foster Parent Registration Authority formally requesting a review of the foster parent’s registration. The employer would give the foster parent a copy of the letter and information provided by the Board about the procedure for handling allegations of foster parent incompetence. In the model, the employer must be satisfied that there is proper evidence to justify referring the case to the Authority. The Tribunal will have powers to declare unjustified referrals by employers to be vexatious. The employer would be required to provide to the Registrar: substantial evidence of incompetence in the present or previous placements evidence of reasonable attempts by the principal or previous principals to assist the foster parent overcome the areas of alleged incompetence. If the Registrar is convinced that the evidence provides adequate grounds for doing so, a contracted officer from the Investigations Branch would conduct an investigation. The nature of the investigation would be appropriate to the allegation and may involve all or some of the following:

• interviews with the foster parent
  
• taking evidential note of police or court proceedings
  
• reading of any statements prepared by the foster parent
  
• observation of care and protection practice
  
• inspection of fostering programs
  
• inspection of papers, children’s workbooks and children’s reports
  
• analysis of the performance of children in the foster parent’s care
  
• interviews with other staff, children and parents.
  

Procedure for handling allegations of improper conduct
While the Investigations Branch’s case load would be primarily concerned with matters of foster parent competence, a small number of referrals in any one year may relate to allegations of improper conduct by foster parent. The New Zealand Child Protection Guidelines apply to all employers of foster parents. Cases referred to the CYPFS in accordance with those guidelines, but subsequently not investigated by CYPFS or Police, would come back in the proposed model for action by the employer as possible improper conduct of a sexual nature by a foster parent. The employer would be able to refer the allegations to the Foster Parent Registration Authority for investigation and determination, and would decide whether the foster parent should remain fostering during this process. In the proposal, referral of all allegations of improper conduct of a sexual nature by a foster parent to the Foster Parent Registration Authority would be mandatory for all agencies. An investigation would be carried out by an officer from the Investigations Branch of the Authority, who will report to the Registrar. Having regard to Board policy, and to precedents established by previous judgements of the Tribunal, the Registrar would decide whether to recommend to the Tribunal that: registration be withdrawn the foster parent be formally reprimanded if the conduct is determined as inappropriate rather than improper, and given conditional registration for a specified period subject to a further report by the employer or, if so determined by the Registrar, a second and final investigation found no improper conduct occurred, in which case no action would be taken. In the proposal, the Registrar would advise the foster parent of the decision to so recommend to the Foster Parent Registration Authority Hearings Tribunal, and that the foster parent has fourteen days in which to appeal to the Tribunal against the recommendation. Having heard any appeal, the Tribunal would determine the matter. The names of foster parents who have been refused registration or deregistered on the grounds of improper conduct of a sexual nature would be retained by the Authority on a not-to-be-employed list. Employers would be able to refer the names of applicants for fostering positions to the Authority to be checked against this list. Employers would also be able to refer allegations of improper conduct other than that of a sexual nature directly to the Authority. The Board’s code of ethics and professional standards will be the reference for any investigation arising from the referral.

Initial registration
In its first year of operation, all foster parents residing in New Zealand or resident in other countries but who wish to be registered in New Zealand would be eligible to apply for registration by the proposed New Zealand Foster Parent Registration Authority. Depending on the outcomes of the consultative process commencing with this discussion paper, registration of foster parents could commence from 1 Jan 2000. Initial registration would be automatic for permanent and approved foster parents in New Zealand The application fee would not apply. Foster parents in New Zealand non-government systems and agencies would be able to apply for registration directly or through their employer. Given that a criminal record check would be part of the registration process, initial registration would be granted to these foster parents subject to a satisfactory criminal record check. There would be no application fee. Graduates of New Zealand foster parent education courses in 1999 but who have not been employed as a foster parent since completion of training would be able to apply for registration. The application fee would not be required.
Foster parents resident in New Zealand but not currently employed in fostering would be able to apply directly to the Authority for registration. The application fee would apply. Foster parents and graduates of foster parent education courses in other countries who have not fostered would be able to apply for registration. Registration would include a satisfactory criminal record check. The application fee would apply.
The granting of registration would be the responsibility of the Registrar. An applicant whose application was declined would be advised in writing of the Registrar’s decision, stating the reasons for registration not being granted. There would be fourteen days in which to appeal to the Tribunal against the Registrar’s decision.

Types of registration
When fully operational, the proposed New Zealand Foster Parent Registration Authority would offer two types of foster parent registration: standard registration for foster parents who have met the criteria determined by the Board conditional registration for a specified period, determined by the Registrar following an investigation. In the proposal it will be possible to give conditional registration following an investigation related to incompetence or inappropriate behaviour. It would not be given where the Registrar determines that the foster parent’s conduct constitutes child sexual assault.

Fees
If it is decided to introduce a system of foster parent registration along the lines of the proposal canvassed in this paper, the Government would provide seeding funding for the initial establishment of the proposed Authority to ensure that it provides a quality registration service for the profession from the beginning. When fully operational the Authority would be self-funding through application and registration fees. One of the responsibilities of the Board would be to ensure that these fees were maintained at a minimum level consistent with the effective operation of the Authority. It is likely that the registration fee would be approximately $52 per annum, or about $1.00 per week, with a $50 application fee for those applying for registration. The application fee would not apply to foster parents employed in New Zealand agencies at the time of the Authority’s commencement. Part of the cost could be offset by agencies and systems requiring fewer resources to undertake what would be done by the proposed Authority. Welfare agencies and systems would need to be assured that the Authority’s processes were of sufficient rigour and consistency that their own processes could be reduced or replaced. Identification of these offsets would enable a lower fee structure.

Registration of Members of Professions

FOSTERING
The concept of professional registration is a well established one. In various forms it applies to many professions which practise in New Zealand. In whichever way it is managed, registration of professionals is usually concerned with some or all of the following:

• Setting minimum qualifications for entry into the profession
  
• Ensuring the quality of the education of persons entering the profession
  
• Establishing, maintaining and improving standards of professional practice
  
• Having and implementing a code of ethics
  
• Having effective disciplinary and appeal processes.
  

Foster Parent Registration
The idea of foster parent registration is a well-established one and exists in a variety of forms in some other countries. In general, models of foster parent registration are concerned with: ensuring the quality of fostering education ensuring suitability for the profession the maintenance of professional standards and ethical behaviour.

Recognition of qualifications
There is a well established and direct relationship between the quality of initial foster parent education and the quality of fostering. At national level in New Zealand there have been initiatives to guide and influence the development and implementation of foster parent education courses but they have not had mandatory status.
Some models of foster parent registration include the accreditation of fostering education programs as part of the registration authority’s responsibilities. In New Zealand, providers of foster parent education are autonomous institutions and there is no formal accreditation process external to the institutions.
The New Zealand’s Foster Parent Qualifications Advisory Panel would endorse university fostering education courses for employment purposes with all welfare Agencies. However, participation by the universities is not mandatory and in the non-government sector there is no formal system for endorsement of foster parent education programs. Across agencies and systems in New Zealand there are differing standards for the profession in terms of qualification requirements.
There is no minimum qualification requirement in the non-government sector, with agencies and systems having a variety of approaches.

Qualifications for employment with Welfare Agencies include specified;

• academic requirements,
• completion of a practicum,
• an interview
• and satisfactory completion of a criminal record check.

Maintaining professional skills
Key aspects of foster parent registration relate to ensuring, maintaining and improving fostering performance. While substantial professional development opportunities are offered across all agencies and systems in New Zealand, it is not mandatory for foster parents to upgrade their knowledge and skills. In this regard fostering stands apart from those professions which have specified requirements about regularly maintaining and upgrading knowledge and skills. In such professions, fulfilling these requirements is necessary to retain the right to practise as a member of the profession.
A system of foster parent registration has the potential to provide a stronger guarantee of the quality of the New Zealand fostering profession by making re-registration contingent upon evidence of regular updating of knowledge and skills.

Guaranteeing professional standards and conduct
Models of registration in fostering and other professions often include a capacity for responding to those who fail to meet certain standards in their professional practice or conduct. This generally is done through an investigatory, disciplinary and appeals process. In this regard, agencies and systems in New Zealand are characterised by a great variety of approaches and processes. This includes processes which are highly formalised and often excessively time consuming, processes which are guided by industrially registered grievance and dispute resolution procedures, and relatively informal processes.
In this, as in other areas, there is no consistency for the profession in New Zealand. A result of this lack of consistency is that different standards apply for people who are engaged in essentially the same work.

Foster Care Program
Foster Care is a protective service for abused and/or neglected children, ages 0-17, who come from all ethnic, social and economic backgrounds. The primary goal of foster care is to reunite families or to ensure the child will leave foster care for a permanent placement. Until that time these children are in need of temporary substitute family care.

Foster Parents
are single or married, with or without children are adults, age 21 or over are needed from all economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds are in good physical and emotional health have a good stable home have the ability to love and let go have the ability to work as members of professional teams and can demonstrate competencies in the following:

• protecting and nurturing children
• meeting developmental needs and addressing developmental delays
• connecting children to safe, nurturing relationships intended to last a lifetime

Foster Care Services
The Welfare Services have several types of foster care. The following is a brief description and requirements for each type of foster care.

Foster Care

• Family completes application, home study and required hours of pre-service training/assessment.
• Additional training hours will be required each year.
• Foster family agrees to accept children in their home within their licensed capacity.
• Foster parents will receive a standard room and board rate based on the child's age and needs assessment.

• Child must meet eligibility requirements based on medical needs.
• Foster parents will keep medical appointments and become educated to care for the child.
• Will receive a special rate per month room and board.
• Participate in regular reviews of Child's need for continued level of care.

• Family will have a home study completed.
• Sign amendment to provide emergency foster care.
• Agree to accept children at any hour of the day, 7 days a week.
• Maintain space within their licensed capacity.
• Agree to participate in training related to the provision of emergency care.
• Agencies agree to pay a negotiated retainer for maintained bed availability.
• Agencies agree to pay a special rate per day if the child is in an emergency placement for a maximum of 28 days unless otherwise approved.

Respite Foster Care

• Providers must be certified
• by Agencies as a foster or residential care provider.
• Respite care providers must sign an application as amended foster/relative care licensee and receive a contract to provide this service.
• Respite care providers may be reimbursed a special unit rate.
• A unit is any part of a consecutive 24 hour period.

Behavioural Foster Care

• To be eligible you must be a licensed foster parent for one year.
• Agree to participate in the required hours of behavioural foster training.
• Will receive a special rate per month room and board.
• Can take no more than the agreed number of BFC children at a time.
• Agree to attend weekly staffing and complete daily charting and journalising.
• Participate in regular reviews of Child's need for continued BFC level of care.

• Therapeutic family based foster home.
• The family is licensed as individualised foster home.
• Participate in additional specialised training as required by the Agency and a prescribed number of additional hours training annually thereafter.
• Agree to participate in extensive specialist training for behavioural and medical categories.
• One parent available 24 hours a day and cannot be employed outside the home.
• Designed to divert children from psychiatric hospitals and residential placements.
• Children will be SED (severely emotionally disturbed).
• Agree to attend weekly staffing and complete daily charting and journalising.
• Will receive one weekend per month, two weeks per year respite care, mandatory. (Respite care providers for career home will serve one family on weekend a month, two weeks a year for respite services).

Approving and Administering standards
All qualifications on the Framework are composed of registered standards - statements that describe what a learner knows or can do. The concept of assessing and measuring against standards is not new. A metre ruler is accepted as being a metre in length because it is bench marked to a ‘standard’ resting in Paris. A manufactured product carrying a national Standards mark is considered to be of high quality because it has been assessed as having met a rigorous set of specifications created by experts in that particular field. In a similar way, standards on the National Qualifications Framework are the accepted benchmarks against which an individual’s learning performance can be assessed and reported on. Standards are learning outcomes. Having qualifications based on learning outcomes is what makes Framework qualifications different from other qualifications systems (which are often focused more on outputs such as courses, or inputs such as curricula or teaching hours). Outcomes models have been endorsed by international bodies involved with funding education systems (eg. the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the OECD).
The Framework is built on a process of consensus. Standards are drafted by expert groups (engineers for engineering standards, geographers for geography standards and so on). The draft standards are then circulated to stake holders for comment and contribution. Once standards are agreed to and registered, they are subject to review by stake holders and experts on a regular basis. This allows for standards to be refined and updated over time.
Each registered standard has a defined credit value and sits at a specified level on the Framework. Credits may be accumulated from different learning institutions or workplaces towards a single qualification without the cumbersome exemption arrangements required in the past: all organisations accredited to assess against standards recognise Framework credits awarded by others.

Eight Levels of Progression
The Framework has eight levels of progression.

• Levels 1-3 are of approximately the same standard as senior secondary education and basic trades training.
• Levels 4-6 approximate to advanced trades, technical and business qualifications.
• Levels 7 and 8 equate with advanced qualifications of graduate and postgraduate standard.

Standards-Setting Bodies
The expert groups which set standards and take part in the accreditation of education and training providers are known as standards-setting bodies (SSB’s), National Standards Bodies (NSB’s), Industry Training Organisations (ITO’s), Standards Implementation Bodies (SIB’s), or advisory groups. NSB’s represent learning areas eg: science, history, philosophy, while ITO’s represent industries eg. forestry, manufacturing, tourism. The most common generic term used is SSB.

Accredited Organisations
Only accredited organisations are able to assess learners against Framework standards, and award credits. Accreditation means an education provider or workplace has sufficient expertise in teaching and assessing, and adequate quality management systems to deliver what is promised to the learner. It is the organisation which is accredited, not its programmes.
The Framework system gives education and training providers much freedom to develop their own programmes. The standards state the outcomes which programmes should generate, not how they must be learned or assessed. Education and training programmes can be designed in whatever size or form is appropriate to the learners and the organisation. This flexibility leads to new types of learning and a range of assessment opportunities. These give learners greater access to learning and enable providers to use resources more effectively.

Assessments by an Accredited Provider
Assessment can be done by the representative of an accredited provider (a school, private training establishment, wananga, government training establishment or a tertiary institution) or by a registered assessor. Registered assessors are individuals registered by an Industry Training Organisation (ITO) or National Standards Body (NSB) to assess within their area of responsibility.
A wide range of evidence may be used to compare a candidate’s performance against a standard as part of the assessment process. As well as traditional tests, projects etc, an assessor can use evidence of prior achievements or evidence from the candidate’s workplace to test performance against a standard.

Moderation Methods
Consistency among assessors is gained through moderation processes which ensure that assessors have a common view on what ‘meeting the standard’ means. Moderation methods include assessor training, regional panels, moderator visits, examples of learner work and common assessment tasks.

Record of Learning
Once a learner is assessed and awarded credit, the learning institution notifies NZQA and the credit is then added to the NZQA database along with other credits achieved by the learner. Once a year, or more often if requested, the learner receives a record of all standards and qualifications he or she has achieved in the past year. This is called the Record of Learning and is an official document, useful as a credential to future employers or education providers.

• Training or In-Service with other foster parents
• Participation in special school programs
• Self-Selected Books
• Home Safety Courses (Fire, Poison, Water, Gun, etc.)
• Self-Selected
• Videos
• Local Support Group Meetings 
• Group Video Presentations
• Individual Professional
• Meetings (Telephone or in person)
• First Aid/CPR Instruction
• Local Conferences, Workshops or Seminars
• Consultation with CYPS Staff
• Specialised volunteer work that pertains to foster care
• Mental Health Treatment Programs
• Consultation with Medical Staff
• Participation in child study
• Participation on Interdisciplinary Team Meetings with educational value
• Time spent visiting facilities (special schools or Residential Treatment Programs)

FOSTER PARENT TRAINING DETAILS

TRAINING INFORMATION

Registration Number:..-----------------------------------------------

Name of LICENSED foster parent who attended training:

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Date(s) of Training:

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Training Course Title:

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City Name Where Training Was Held:

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First and Last Name of Presenter/Speaker:

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Agency Who Held Training:

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Number of Hours Completed
(for this course ONLY):

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Contact (Name) and Phone # to verify:

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Comments:

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Authorised Signature: -----------------------------------------
 
 

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