SaMC Guidelines

The Safe and Meaningful (SaMC) Guidelines (Burke and Woodhouse, 2021) offer practitioners an evidence-based practice tool for decision making, managing and reviewing contact arrangements. The SaMC Guidelines are designed for use in public law cases. They organise decision making around the developmental and trauma recovery needs of children and young people across various contexts including short-term or permanent foster/kinship/special guardianship care, and post-adoption.  Users of the SaMC Guidelines can automatically generate a report with a contact and support plan based on their responses.

The SaMC Guidelines support users to reflect upon the child’s experience of separation from their birth relative and their short- and long-term developmental needs. They alert practitioners to important areas that are sometimes overlooked when considering contact/family time. In addition to identifying potential risks of contact to the child, the SaMC Guidelines highlight the risks of contact not taking place. This is because the Guidelines are orientated around contact being a potential resource that can play a significant role in the child’s developmental progression, whether through aiding their recovery from past trauma and permanent separation from birth family or through facilitating their reunification with birth relatives. This is done by considering how much support the child, carer/adopter and birth relative will require for contact to achieve one or more of five purposes, each of which is aligned with the developmental needs of children and young people separated from their birth relatives. 

As indicated in the diagram above, Purpose 1 considers the child’s foundation for developmental recovery: a stable placement. It determines whether contact can support the placement or if it risks undermining the placement making contact unsafe for the child. Purpose 2 addresses the child’s feelings of loss, separation and rejection. It considers the extent to which contact allows the child to maintain a connection with a birth relative who has, or could have, positive meaning for them. Purposes 3, 4 & 5 are a continuum of the extent to which the birth relative can play an active role in the child’s understanding of themselves and their lives. Purpose 3 allows the child to know who their birth relative is. The birth relative does not need to be active in this process beyond being a safe, benign presence for the child. Purpose 4 requires the birth relative to acknowledge their difficulties caring for the child. Purpose 5 requires the birth relative to accept responsibility for harm they caused their child and be emotionally available to support the child's processing of trauma. 

Upon completion of the SaMC Guidelines the SaMC Outcome Table gives an overview of how much support the child, carer and birth relative require for contact to achieve the five purposes central to the child's needs. The outcome column indicates whether each purpose is achievable. A specific purpose is deemed unachievable if a significant amount of support ('High') is needed for anyone of the child, carer or birth relative. Such support is likely to take a long time. 'Medium' levels of support indicate the purpose is achievable with appropriate additional support. 'Low' level of support mean that suitable support is already likely to be in place. Contact does not need to serve all five purposes to take place. However, the importance of the child’s placement stability for their development means if purpose 1 is not achievable contact is currently unsafe and should, in most cases, be paused, even if the other four Purposes could be achieved. Circumstances around contact arrangements are not static and must be regularly reviewed.

An example of the SaMC outcome table automatically generated upon completion of the SaMC Guidelines.

Users of the SaMC Guidelines evidence their choices when completing the PDF form and input support ideas for the child, carer and birth relative to achieve each purpose. They create a contact support plan that outlines the nature and frequency of contact and how it will be facilitated.

SaMC Online Report Generator

SaMC Online is the digital version of the Safe and Meaningful Contact Guidelines with added features. SaMC Online generates a report that evidences and explains the users input into the SaMC Guidelines, outlines the purpose of contact, and automatically produces a contact support plan. SaMC Online has been developed to save practitioners report writing time by automatically generating a report through completion of the SaMC Online form.

Accreditation

Practitioners must complete the one-day training to be licensed to use the SaMC Guidelines. Click here to commission training for your organisation.  Alternatively, you can undertake the online anytime training.