Introduction
Why Foster
What you'll need
The practical details
The day you foster
Why foster with Community Foster Care
The last word
Case Study 01
Case Study 02
Contact us
Foster Carer Information
Community Foster Care is an award-winning charity whose dedicated team of staff and foster carers have helped turn around the lives of countless children and young people. In this site, you’ll learn how and why people just like you successfully foster children every day.
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Why Foster?
Fostering is one of the most rewarding experiences you will ever have.
Each year, thousands of children are taken into care because they have been abused or abandoned or because their natural parents are no longer able to look after them. These children are almost always hurt and vulnerable. They are sometimes angry. And, without exception, they are frightened of the future. Unless a foster family can be found for them (and there is always a shortage), such children face being placed in anonymous institutions, under the custody of social services. Placing a child in a real home, however, with all the love, attention and support that goes with a real family, gives them a chance to rebuild their shattered lives; to find security, stability and hope.
Why foster? Because it's one of the most worthwhile things that a person can do.
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What you'll need
Practically, you'll only need to have a spare bedroom - we will provide training, support and a generous financial allowance. Personally, however, you will need to be patient, caring, interested in the child's education and well-being, sympathetic and dedicated. You'll need to be prepared - and so will your family, if you have one - for the ups and downs of fostering: the angry outbursts, the tantrums, the times when your foster child suddenly wants to talk about painful feelings (and the times when they want to keep those feelings to themselves). You will need to be sensitive to their experiences and their temperaments, but also prepared to discipline them when appropriate. You will need, above all, to show a willingness to understand them.
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The practical details...
The process of becoming a carer is not complicated, and Community Foster Care will arrange and supervise each stage. Once you apply to foster, you will have a short, friendly interview, in your home, with our Fostering Link Worker (the person who will always liaise between you and Community Foster Care). The Fostering Link Worker will answer any queries you have, and will talk to you in more detail about the process of becoming a carer and the experience of fostering. They will then help you fill out a number of forms required by law - these include a Criminal Records Bureau check form, which is designed to ensure carers pose no risk to the children who are placed with them. The forms are confidential.
After this meeting, you will be enrolled for foster care training. The training takes place locally, at times to suit you. Our initial courses, which are run by specialist trainers, last for six weeks. They will teach you how to manage the behaviour of those you foster. Community Foster Care has a wide range of trainers, including one of the UK's leading experts on the management of challenging behaviour.
Finally, an independent assessor will meet you with to assess how you have responded to the training, and to discuss whether you feel ready to begin foster caring. If everything has gone smoothly, and you are happy to proceed, you will then be formally approved by our Fostering Panel, who will decide, along with you, what type of fostering you can do (long-term, short term, respite and so on).
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The day you foster
We will provide you with on-going support from the day your fostering experience begins. We have a dedicated team of Fostering Link Workers, social workers, therapists, and a Psychiatrist, who are all here to help you. Few other agencies in England offer such resources. We are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to deal with emergencies. Your Fostering Link Worker will be in weekly contact with you so that you can raise issues and concerns as they arise. Every three weeks you will receive a personal visit from us to talk things through in detail (and we are always available between these visits). We also have a team who are dedicated to helping those foster children who have learning difficulties or who are experiencing problems at school, including play therapists and an Educational Psychologist. This team will liaise with the child's teachers to help improve their progress.
Your weekly allowance, which covers all the expenses of raising a child, is paid directly into your bank account. If you foster a child over the long-term, arrangements will be made for you to have short periods of respite, when the child will go to stay with other foster carers.
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Why foster with Community Foster Care?
Community Foster Care is a national leader in the fostering field, having won several major awards for its work. The Company offers its carers one of the most comprehensive training programmes in Britain, and an unrivalled support network to help sustain them while they foster.
You might also like to know that we are one of the few agencies in England is that is also a registered charity, which means that our resources go into constantly improving our services, and into regenerating disadvantaged communities. Our carers have a voice in the future of the Company, too, with democratic representation on the Company's Board of Directors.
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The last word
Fostering can be tough, and although Community Foster Care will train you and support you every step of the way, you're the one that does the real work. If you decide not to proceed, or if you proceed and decide it's not for you, no one will blame you or think less of you. Fostering is a big challenge, and it doesn't work for everyone. But if you stay with the process, if you are able to guide and support and care for the children we place with you, you will not only have achieved something remarkable for yourself, you will have changed lives for the better - forever.
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Case Study 01:
CFC foster carer
Name: Karen (42)
"You don't need to be well-off or well-educated to foster. You need to have good values as a person and be loving. You need to have patience. Those things are much more important than a big house or status or qualifications. When Sarah came to us she was quiet and withdrawn. We had a lot of tantrums as well. But we stuck at it and eventually she learned to trust us. It was when the trust started that everything changed. She came out of herself. She did better at school. You could see her healing. She's still someone with a troubled past; that will never go. But she has learned to accept what happened to her and move on. We feel we've given her the chance to have the same start in life that other kids have - that other kids take for granted - and that wasn't the case when she was in care, basically forgotten. For us, fostering has been a truly amazing thing, a meaningful thing."
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Case Study 02:
Still to be complete
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Contact
Twigworth Court Business Centre
Tewkesbury Road
Twigworth
Gloucester
GL2 9PG
Tel: 01452 731144
Fax: 01452 731660
Email: info@communityfostercare.co.uk
Company Registration No. 3719101
Charity Registration No. 1084124
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