Membership

Individual membership is designed for people working independently or employed by an agency that is not signed up as a Corporate Member. Please note, invoices for individual membership are not payable directly by agencies.

Our aim is that individual membership will keep you abreast of key developments in policy, practice and research and provide the opportunity to maintain helpful links with colleagues across Scotland.

Learn more in our AFKA Individual Membership Benefits Sheet 2022-2023.

Corporate Membership is for local authorities, voluntary adoption agencies and independent fostering providers. Currently, all 32 Local Authorities in Scotland are members, as well as many other adoption and fostering agencies.

AFKA Scotland also works in collaboration with CoramBAAF. All Corporate Member agencies and their staff are entitled to benefits from both AFKA Scotland and CoramBAAF.

Learn more in our AFKA Corporate Membership Benefits Sheet 2022-2023 and AFKA Scotland membership – CoramBAAF Membership Benefits 2022-2023.

AFKA Scotland hosts two Consortia (West & North East) funded by a separate membership fee, providing a local forum for members to hear about and share latest developments in policy, legislation, practice and research.

The purpose of the Consortia is to help agencies to support staff who are directly involved in adoption and fostering work. While AFKA’s national forums allow a representative from each agency (normally a manager) to participate in Scotland-wide meetings, the Consortia are focused on providing advice, guidance, support and training opportunities to the much greater number of staff who are directly involved in the provision of services.

Learn more in our AFKA Consortia Benefits Sheet 2022-2023.

Some testimonials from Consortia members:

The opportunity to meet with other professionals involved in family placement work, to share experiences, ideas and research is very helpful. It is also useful in terms of developing the knowledge base of workers and managers new to family placement work- I found the WOSC very useful when I started as a team manager in fostering and adoption with no prior experience of working in that field.

I have attended one Pan Scotland meeting which was great to attend! all consortia meetings are a great opportunity to have practise discussions which the F and A sub group cannot achieve.

Not attended but managers do and report it is very helpful for local issues and networking.

I see this link as a fundamental life line for practitioners, both in sharing good practice/practice challenges. There is very little practice experience within our SMT and without the link I feel we would be quite directionless and insular. The practice wisdom and legal input offered by AFKA is very valuable, as well as AFKA being the vehicle to gel LA’s meeting together. Each consortia needs to have enough LA representation to make the consortia worthwhile.

Associate Membership is for organisations such as law firms, NHS Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups, adoption, fostering or family support agencies, training or service support providers, childcare charities, foster carers’ or adopters’ associations, Government departments or statutory agencies, voluntary agencies, university departments or research projects.

It has been designed to help keep your organisation well informed of new developments in the field, access expertise, engage in multi-disciplinary forums, improve practice delivery, evidence regulatory compliance, engage in debate on current issues and offer an opportunity to share policy and practice.

Learn more in our AFKA Associate Membership Benefits Sheet 2022-2023.