There is a current shortage of around 9,000 foster carers needed to offer stable and nurturing stable placements for children who are not able to live with their own family. Many of the children needing such stable placements are children who require foster carers able to deal with their complex needs.
Statistics suggest that:
• Disabled […]
Foster Care
Children of all ages are placed in foster care for periods of time ranging from one night to several years. There are many reasons why a child may need to be placed into foster care and these could include the inability of their family to care for them due to issues of long […]
Challenging Perceptions
Traditionally we see fostering as a role primarily for females with the male taking very much a back seat role. However, there are many men who are interested in a career as a single foster carer or main carer within a couple and consider themselves to have the skills required to offer stability […]
What is fostering
Fostering is not a permanent arrangement and the long term goal of fostering is usually to try and help the child return home to their birth family. In a fostering arrangement, unless there is a Care Order in place, the child’s birth parent (s) retain parental responsibility for the child . This […]
For many years fostering was seen as a vocation or a voluntary service, something you did to help those children in the community who were in need. Over many years this perception has changed to reflect the greater obligations society has to protect those in need. Most people are aware that if you are […]
What skills do I need to Foster?
Many people believe that formal qualifications are required to become a foster carer and as you will have learned from our website; this is not the case. You will, however, hear people talk about the skills and abilities you need to be successfully approved as a foster carer. […]
You may have heard that becoming a foster carer means joining the ‘fostering team’. So what exactly does this mean? Well, as a foster carer you will be part of a team who all work together to plan for the child’s future and ensure their needs are met in a safe and secure placement.
Who […]
A few weeks ago I wrote about how difficult it can be for birth children to deal with the impact of becoming part of a fostering family. It can be very difficult for children to learn to share their homes and families with foster children, especially during the early stages of a placement when […]
There are many thousands of children in Local Authority care throughout the country, they are different ages, ethnicities and have differing needs. For this reason fostering agencies need to recruit a wide variety of potential foster carers to meet the wide variety of needs presented by foster children. This means not only people with […]
