Fostering
What is Fostering?
Fostering is looking after someone else's child or children in your own home; children may need to be fostered when their parents cannot look after them. If they cannot be cared for by other relatives or family friends, the local Social Services Department can arrange for them to stay with approved foster carers while maintaining family contact.
What Do Foster Carers Do?
As a foster carer you have a very important relationship with the Social Services Department and indeed you work in partnership with the child's social worker. This means that you will be able to attend and contribute to meetings that are held to consider the child's future.
A vital part of the work of the carer is to help the children keep in touch with their own families.
Children come to foster homes having had a variety of experiences and with all sorts of different behaviour. Children, who have been sexually abused, for example, need very skilled and sensitive care and foster carers will need help to work out ways of dealing with particular behaviour and to help the children make some sense of their experience. It is important that the child feels safe from physical hurt, or emotional or sexual abuse. We can help carers to establish routines that will make children feel that your home is a safe place for them.
Different types of fostering
The term fostering refers to a number of arrangements for providing care to children and young people, briefly there are:
- Temporary/short term fostering
- Temporary/short term foster carers look after children for
limited periods of time.
Your role is to care for children whilst plans are made for their future. This could mean that you would be involved in enabling the children to return home to live with their family or supporting them to move on to a permanent alternative family (either through adoption or fostering). - Permanent/long term fostering
- Permanent foster carers look after children where the plan means that they are unlikely to be able to live with their birth family. Foster carers work with children, the child's birth parents and social workers to support regular, planned contact with their relatives, which could include brothers and sisters living elsewhere.
- Children needing long term care away from their family will have had unhappy experiences. They may not trust adults because of their unsettled lives. They may be likeable and lively but may sometimes behave in a demanding and challenging manner. They will sometimes have difficulty in making relationships, both within and outside the foster home. They will need support to cope with school and sustain friendships.
It is hard work caring for children in these circumstances, but all the more rewarding to see them grow and develop an understanding of family life.
Teenage placement scheme
Teenage placement carers provide an alternative to residential care for teenagers in the 13-17 age range. Most teenagers are not looking for substitute parents as they have their own family and do not want a new mum and dad. They need someone who is prepared to offer them a home for a period of time between 6 months and 3 years. Sometimes young people need a placement throughout the period of their full-time education.
Respite care
Respite carers look after children for regular planned short periods. This may be a day, a weekend or a little longer. This is sometimes offered to other foster carers as a form of support or back up. In some circumstances it can also be offered to families in the community with whom the Social Services Department is working.
Shared care
Involves carers offering regular periods of care for disabled children/young people. This aims to offer short breaks for both children and their families. This can be anything from a sitting service to a weekend stay.
Supportive Lodgings
Not fostering but a way of helping older teenagers (aged 16+) towards full independence, offering board and lodgings and some friendly support.
Mother and baby
Places are also sometime needed for a Mother and small child so they can stay together and have help with practical skills.
Who Can Foster?
You can be:-
- A married or unmarried couple
- A single man or woman
- Divorced or re-married
- Working or unemployed
- A disabled person
- An experienced parent with or without children at home
- Childless but with some experience of children
We are committed to finding the most suitable family for every child who needs looking after. This means that we would always do our best to place children with a family from the same culture and religion as themselves. If you are from a minority ethnic group and think you might be interested in any type of fostering, we would be particularly keen to hear from you.
What Happens Next - The Process
We have to be very sure that the people we trust to look after children are going to give the right sort of care in the right sort of environment. Many of the children will have had very unhappy experiences at home and need security and stability in their foster placement.
If, after reading this, you are interested in becoming a foster carer:-
Contact your local Social Services office (details below). We promise to respond to your enquiry within two weeks.
If you wish to proceed, your permission is needed to take up references with the Police, Health and Probation. The Department will also need to have contact with your family doctor.
All applicants attend a Preparation Course, which usually runs
over several sessions.
Once you have attended a course and have decided to proceed, you
will need to complete an application form. This includes naming two
people who know you well, who can give personal references.
The main part of the assessment process involves a number of visits from a family placement social worker who will want to get to know you and talk with your children, if they are old enough.
The social worker will write a lengthy report, to which you will have contributed. You will see and sign the report.
The report is then presented to the Foster Care Panel. You will be invited to attend the Panel who will consider your fostering application.
If you decide to apply to be a foster carer, you may well be wondering how long the whole process will take. It does take some time, but it is impossible to say how long. This will depend on how busy everyone is and when the next Preparation Course is due to start.
Currently foster care assessments are completed within seven months. At this stage we simply want to assure you that we really are interested in your application and that we do need foster carers. We will keep you informed about the different stages in the process.
What Sort of Support Do Foster Carers Get?
As a foster carer you would have your own social worker who will want to talk generally with you about how things are going, what you enjoy and what does not come so easily, as well as issues to do with the child being looked after. Children will have their own social worker who will help them and their families.
Financial support is vital to enable foster carers to look after children to the best of their abilities. We pay a fostering allowance to cover the day to day cost of caring as well as fees or additional allowances. A copy of the current allowances will be made available to you when you apply.
Many foster carers find other carers in the same situation about the best source of support, and groups of foster carers meet regularly throughout the county.
We all need training to help us do our jobs properly and to keep up to date with new developments. We provide training to foster carers both before approval and afterwards on a wide variety of topics, such as how to manage difficult behaviour, discipline, working with parents and caring for children who have been abused.
For further information please contact:
Team Manager (Foster Placement)
The Children's Resource Team
Moor House
Widemarsh Common
Hereford HR4 9NA
Tel: (01432) 262830
Email:
fostering@herefordshire.gov.uk
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Guide for Young People Looked After by Herefordshire
Herefordshire Fostering Service Statement of Purpose
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