Supporting foster carers
Fostering People offers a comprehensive package of foster care support so that our foster carers are fully supported and fostering placements are successful.
Supporting foster carers
Our foster carer support package includes
- Access to a member of staff 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, 365 days of the year.
- Supervision and support from a qualified and suitably experienced Fostering People Supervising Social Worker, who visits at least on a monthly basis whenever any child is in placement and maintains regular telephone contact.
- Access to qualified therapists and education staff for consultation.
- Paid respite and/or holidays for children and young people.
- Regular support group meetings.
- A comprehensive Foster Carer Handbook.
- A comprehensive post-approval training programme, which meets the Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC) training standards and includes access to NVQ Health and Social Care (Children and Young People) Level 3.
- A level of financial support that values the skills of foster carers.
- An opportunity to be involved with the Fostering People Carer Forums.
- Membership of FosterTalk, an independent voluntary benefit scheme aimed at the needs of foster carers. The scheme offers free legal advice, legal expenses insurance, advice on tax and personal finance issues, a regular specialist magazine and preferential pricing arrangements on hundreds of lifestyle products and services.
Review of foster carers as part of our foster carer support
Fostering People has a thorough system for the conduct of reviews of foster carer's terms of approval by an Independent Reviewing Officer.
Foster carer reviews give the foster carers an opportunity to reflect on the work they have undertaken and to look forward into their fostering career. The agency's Independent Reviewing Officer carries out lots of work behind the scenes (reading the carer's file and reflecting on reports provided by foster carers themselves, children and young people and Social Workers) and then meets with the carers and the Fostering People Social Worker to carry out the review.
John Platt, Operational Manager reads and signs off every carer’s annual review. John comments: "I like to keep in touch with all of our carers - meeting them at support groups is one way but it’s important too for me to know how they have found the last year with the agency, their successes and challenges. It really helps us to work closely together."
