On Tuesday 21 January, SUFS partners Who Cares? Scotland (WC?S) and CELCIS gave evidence the Justice Committee on the Children (Scotland) Bill, speaking to the provisions in the Bill and the Family Justice Modernisation Strategy in relation to sibling relationships. Full comments from SUFS on these provisions can be found in the joint written response to the committee here.

Duncan Dunlop, Chief Executive of WC?S spoke alongside OisÍn King, Care Experienced Member of WC?S. They highlighted the current reality of separation and loss of relationships for many brothers and sisters in care. OisÍn shared powerful testimony about his own life in care and his experience being separated from his youngest sister, including how it felt to be supervised during ‘contact’ sessions with her where “love was crowded out by process”.

Dr. Louise Hill from CELCIS also gave evidence, sharing academic expertise on practice relating to maintaining children’s relationships, as well as highlighting the practice of the STAR project, the Lifelong Links project and the important work of family group decision making where the relationships that matter to children and young people are at the heart and often include brothers and sisters. Dr. Hill pointed to the work of the SUFS partnership and shared that a children’s rights approach must underpin how we understand and maintain these relationships.

Key points were made by both organisations throughout the session about the importance of brother and sister relationships and the importance of keeping them together when being taken into care. During the session, it was highlighted that resources should never be the boundary to supporting brother and sister relationships. And that when looking to discover what relationships are important to a child or young person to always start with them to find out where the already established, secure and loving relationships are.

You can watch the full committee session on parliament TV.

BBC Radio 4’s ‘File on 4’ has recorded a programme on Separated Siblings to be broadcast this evening, Tuesday 14 January, at 8pm.

The programme will highlight the magnitude of the issue of sibling separation across the UK and share first-hand experiences of care experienced brothers and sisters who have lived apart and the effect it has had on their lives.

The programme will feature Theighan McGirr and her sister Sophia who spoke to the programme-makers about their experience of being separated when growing up in care. Theighan has been a hugely powerful voice for change to stop sibling separation both in her work with Who Cares? Scotland and in a personal capacity.

Clan Childlaw and Siblings Reunited (STAR) also contributed to the programme. The programme will be available to download and repeated on Sunday 19^th January at 5pm. Read more about the programme here.

Everyone at Stand Up For Siblings is looking forward to tuning in!

Stand Up For Siblings presented to an audience in Wales yesterday on adoption and siblings in care. Representing the partnership, Dr Gillian Henderson from SCRA presented on ‘The permanence of adoption in Scotland and siblings in care’ at the annual ExChange Wales adoption lecture in Cardiff. The event at Cardiff University was also live streamed on the internet. Gillian provided delegates with give an overview of the Children’s Hearings System and permanence and adoption in Scotland. She then focused on findings relevant to siblings in care from two studies: 1. ‘Assessment and support of the sibling relationships of long-term fostered and adopted children’ and research on ‘Complexity in the lives of looked after children and their families in Scotland: 2003 to 2016’. You can view Gillian’s presentation here.

The Stand Up For Siblings partners would like to offer best wishes in this festive season to all of our allies in the fight to protect the rights of brothers and sisters involved with the care system. We would also like to express our gratitude for your support throughout 2019.

We have made significant progress in recent months, particularly the commitment made by Scottish Government to strengthen the law to promote sibling relationships. Even without a change in the law though progress is being made. We hear stories daily of efforts made by corporate parents and practitioners to promote and protect relationships between brothers and sisters through creative use of resources and a commitment to the children in their care.

It has been a privilege to be invited to contribute to the Independent Care Review this year. The review has placed children and adults’ experience at the heart of their work and has inspired us here at Stand Up For Siblings to keep pushing for change. While consensus is building that change is urgently needed, we are also aware that there is much that still needs to be done.

We are not campaigning for more of what we currently have but instead a much more radical mindshift. Our imagination about what is possible is to some extent stifled by the current language around ‘placements’ and ‘contact’ rather than relationships. As we move into a new decade we are feeling optimistic that change is possible.

To kick off the New Year we will be posting over seven days our reimagined 7 steps to sibling relationships. These are bolder than the previous seven steps.

Please look out for these in mid January and let us know how you can help us realise these ambitions.

The Stand Up For Siblings coalition has responded to the Children (Scotland) Bill and Family Justice Modernisation Strategy. The response includes several case studies. You can view our response here.