Managers Blog

I'm David Banks, Principal Manager for the Fostering Assessment Team here at Stoke-on-Trent City Council. I manage a small team, with five dedicated social workers, Michelle Edwards, Fern Millward, Amanda Hood and Kim Vukovic, along with our panel advisor, Melissa Payne. Between us, we carry out the full range of fostering and kinship care assessments across the city, and every single one of those assessments has the same goal at its heart: making sure children and young people find safe, stable, and loving family environments.

Day to day, my role involves allocating and overseeing assessments for both mainstream foster carers and kinship carers, guiding them through from initial enquiry all the way to Fostering Panel and, in some cases, through to court as part of legal proceedings. I also lead on recruitment, which means getting out to fostering events and campaigns designed to attract and retain the calibre of carers our children deserve. Good foster carers don't just appear; we must go out and find them, support them, and hold on to them.

I've now worked in the fostering service for 15 years, and this year marks 30 years with Stoke-on-Trent City Council altogether. Which, depending on how you look at it, either makes me very experienced or simply means I've been asked "have you thought about retiring yet?"

 Before stepping into management, I spent many years as an assessing social worker within the fostering service, specialising largely in kinship assessments alongside mainstream carer assessments. Before that, I worked in safeguarding children's teams, working directly with some of our most vulnerable families.

That grounding in safeguarding has stayed with me throughout my career. It gave me a real, front-line understanding of just how much of a difference the right family can make to a child's life and, just as importantly, how much hard work, resilience and heart it takes from foster to make that difference happen. It's why, all these years later, I remain just as committed to getting assessments right and finding the best possible match for every child who needs one.