Foster Agencies

ONRECORD for foster carers and fostering agencies

Carers and agencies need to meet one of the most important requirements of fostering agencies – keeping good records.

National Minimum Standard number 26 requires that records be clear, up to date, stored securely and contribute to an understanding of the child’s life. They must be kept for 15 years. ONRECORD will help you to achieve this standard.

ONRECORD is specifically designed for collecting and organising records of events over time. Developed by a doctor and a solicitor, our online resources and mobile app will help you ensure carers keep good records.

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The need

There is a clear need for a method of recording day-to-day events in the home that:

• Makes good quality records easier;
• Ensures standardisation as far as possible;
• Ensures that records are stored securely;
• Makes foster carer records immediately available to supervising staff and other key individuals
• Ensures that records can be searched quickly; and
• Facilitates the inclusion of data from foster carer records in reports and statements.

Good records, made in a more timely way by using the mobile app, will assist foster carers in recalling events accurately at a later date if they are required to give evidence.

Although some fostering services provide guidelines for record keeping, some foster carers are asked to record information without any guidelines about what they need to recall.

The solution

ONRECORD helps foster carers to keep good records by providing a secure, simple to use and readily accessible framework that resolves the issues around:

ONRECORD is a highly flexible combination of a mobile app and web application. Foster carers upload records, along with any attachments linked to the record, such as photographs, documents, screenshots, video or audio recordings. They can use either their mobile device or a lap/desk top computer to make records. Records are uploaded in encrypted form to a secure central database where they are automatically stored in a chronology. Records can be accessed by authorised professionals who can search and select records to download in pdf format to include in reports and statements.

In order to make records easier to organise and sort, ONRECORD allows any number of bespoke headings or labels, depending on the needs of the individual child/family. The number and choice of headings (‘labels’) the carer or agency finds helpful to define a child’s or a family’s issues is entirely optional and can be individually tailored to the child’s needs. The choice of labels may be made by the carer, the agency or by the carer’s supervisor or the local authority social worker, as appropriate.

Assessment of foster carers

Completing Form F assessments is a challenge and requires good analytical skills as well as good organisation and planning. ONRECORD will assist by making it very simple for the assessors to develop practical, standardised assessment tasks which are readily understood and achieved by foster carers whose performance is then easily reviewed. Records, input by the foster carer on a mobile device, can be reviewed by the assessor and exported/downloaded to inform the analysis and reporting.

ONRECORD provides a simple, structured method of making and reviewing foster carer records over time. Uploaded records are then immediately available to the assessor, can quickly generate evidence of competencies and complement other approaches to enhance the overall assessment.