Sarah Norman - DIRECTOR
PCFS is a small family-run fostering service which began with Sarah who was a foster parent for many years, starting her own business some fifteen years ago.
Sarah is one of the directors of PCFS. Sarah has fostered for many years and so fully understands the role and demands that being a foster parent brings. “We aim to provide the best quality care to children and young people during a difficult time in their life by placing them with quality, highly skilled and trained foster families”. Sarah still plays an active role within PCFS working very closely with the fostering team.
PCFS recognises the individuality of children, the importance of children in care having as full an experience of family life as possible without unnecessary restrictions, and the centrality of foster parents as core members of the team around the child.
PCFS has an experienced team which supports all the organisation’s foster parents.
Foster Parents have benefited as part of a smaller family-managed organisation that cherishes the feeling that foster parents are much more a part of the team working together. They appreciate the experience and support given by the fostering team.
Sue Bartholomew - RESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUAL
Sue is a dynamic, experienced, and creative Responsible Individual with 24 years’ of experience working with children and young people.
Sue’s greatest strength is her organisational and time management skills yet remaining flexible and responsive to meet the everyday changes and challenges to support social workers and colleagues. Sue has developed quality assurance processes to ensure compliance with relevant legislation and promoting best practice and well organised and effective systems and procedures.
Starting in an educational setting in 1997, through until 2004, Sue worked directly with children and young people in a primary school as a qualified Learning Assistant and in an Ecumenical project in an area of high deprivation as a Youth Worker and set up a Parent and Toddler group supported by Health visitors and Midwives. From 2004 to 2009 Sue worked for Kent County Council as a Social Work Assistant, Ready for Practice Student Social Worker, completing a MA in Social Worker in 2007.
Sue has extensive experience with the addition of Practice Education HE6 Health and Social Care CPD supporting student social workers; completed in March 2014.
With experience and qualifications as a facilitator for the nationally accredited Fostering Changes and the Positive Management of Challenging Behaviour (again as an accredited trainer), Sue has also supported Child Protection Training and written and delivered training on Missing Person, Rough Housing and initiated, devised, and delivered a 2-day pre-approval training for foster parent applicants going forward from Skills to Foster.
The latest Ofsted Inspection in 2022 rated PCFS as Good. Sue is proud of the team’s achievement and the progress made at PCFS and is looking forward to developing the service to greater achievements looking for support foster parents and great outcomes for children and young people.
Lucy Castree - REGISTERED MANAGER
Lucy is the Registered Manager at PCFS. Lucy qualified with a BSc Social Work from Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2015. Following this she moved between Wales and England where she worked in a range of social work settings – Looked after children, Intake and assessment, statutory child protection, adult protection and out-of-hours (EDT) for children and adults. She has worked in both adults and children’s services since qualifying and has a wealth of experience conducting assessments from initial through to court-directed assessments. She has extensive experience chairing complex strategy meetings and legal planning meetings and feels very confident in the safeguarding of both children and adults.
As the Registered Manager, she will ensure that the supervising social workers have the right support, tools, time, and flexibility to support the foster families. The supervising social workers get closest to the foster parents and their ability to lead, coach, teach, empathise, and empower the foster parents can seriously affect their success. Foster parents are professionals and are the experts of their situation and the child/children that are living with them. Consistency in this role is very important. Lucy aims to provide the leaders of the organisation with timely feedback about the service and outcomes for the children in order that everyone can work together to improve the service continuously and make and sustain valued relationships for the SSW and foster parents to be successful and valued. This will then enable them to facilitate a placement for a child where they can thrive. Lucy is committed to working together as the organisation of PCFS, to provide a high-quality service, that uphold its values of treating everyone as an individual and being fully inclusive.
Lucy is committed to ongoing professional development and delivers the passion she has for young people to experience family life, without the risk of harm, and provide consistency in the support they have around them.