What is Therapeutic Community Fostering?
Therapeutic parenting, trauma informed practice, gentle parenting - whatever you want to call it, this is how Community Foster Care defines our style of therapeutic foster care and what makes us different.
Fostering is not the same as parenting your own children. Many children in the care system have extensive trauma as a result of abuse, neglect and highly disrupted beginnings. This often results in complex needs and challenging behaviour. Therapeutic fostering is about parenting in a different way, in a way that understands these children had a different starting point in life, at a crucial time in their development and attachment building.
Community Foster Care is a trauma responsive organisation and we believe that all interactions are an opportunity for intervention and learning.
We understand all behaviour to be a communication and must be considered as such. Our culture is reflective, our community are encouraged to be curious about themselves and each other.
The children we look after require love, security and a sense of belonging provided by a nurturing family. Our families need to be resilient, highly skilled and well supported. So what does this look like?
Core Principles
Psychodynamic (helping people understand their emotions and unconscious patterns of behaviour, where these came from and how they shape us)
Promoting a therapeutic parenting approach across our community
Critical Reflection
Collaborative & Relational
Trauma Informed
How are we different?
Our Therapeutic Approach
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What is ‘Community Fostering’?
‘Community Fostering’ is the term we use to describe what it means to be a CFC foster parent. It outlines our core practices and how that looks different to other independent fostering agencies and local authorities. Community Fostering is always therapeutic but depending on the needs of the child, we have three levels of support packages. Take a deep dive on what therapeutic fostering with us looks like below:
Our Therapeutic Community
While fostering can be truly rewarding and fulfilling it can also be really hard and so, we know our foster carers need good support around them. Building a ‘therapeutic community’ is an important part of this support and our wider beliefs.
A therapeutic community provides strength, resilience, security and a sense of belonging. Community Foster Care provides structured space for groups to explore and reflect on the feelings experienced as a foster carer. We know how important the support network is when fostering, of reflecting together, and how valuable our foster carers find interacting with one another, sharing their experiences and advice.
Our Reflective Culture
Our community is encouraged to be curious about themselves and each other and we will help with this throughout. Our identities are made up of all we have lived through and experienced, which makes us all unique! Within the community, we know that it is vital to understand the individual and by understanding each of us and how we tick, we are (hopefully!) better enabled to make sense of situations, together.
We want to (sensitively) understand ‘what is your story?’ and, ‘what is important to you?’ By understanding ourselves and being curious about each other, our stories and how our personalities have been constructed, we are more equipped to help work through any challenges or triggers you come across during your fostering career - this applies to us all and informs the way we work together.
Trauma Informed
Our whole community is on a journey when it comes to being trauma informed. To be ‘trauma informed’ we believe it’s key to have an understanding of cultural humility and an awareness of trauma, in both individuals and communities. This awareness will help inform us in how to best support healing and avoid re-traumatising.
To develop this trauma informed practice we must consider lots of things, such as our language and communication style, our policies, and our environment. A big part of our approach is recognising how critical it is to have a brilliant team around the child. The welfare of looked after children involves huge input from many professionals across different organisations and networks. This can, inevitably, be very challenging for both our foster carers and our immediate team working with the child and the foster family. Navigating these relationships and the previous traumas experienced by the child and others in ‘the system’ can be tricky. Usually with the support of our psychotherapists, we seek to bridge any gaps and pull together the professional network in a way that allows this team surrounding the child to work together and provide the best care and support for that young person.
Loving Secure Attachments
In order for foster children to experience a sense of belonging and security in a family, Community Foster Care asks our foster families (often adults in families and sometimes their birth children) to immerse themselves in a relationship which is building towards a loving bond. We would argue that this can only be meaningfully achieved by the individual allowing themselves to openly engage in an instinctive and genuine emotional bond. To enable the attachment to form, this must be supported by key behaviours and, in many cases, this loving, secure attachment can only happen through genuine parental loving behaviours.
We believe intuitively but also informed by research, that these experiences enable previous traumas to be overcome. Neurons that fire together, wire together (Donald Hemb, 1949).
Three Levels of Support
Community Fostering
Structured Community Fostering
Bespoke Community Fostering
As a community, we strive to:
Be curious
Be committed to critical reflection
Work collaboratively (and be mindful of the challenging emotions this may provoke)
Be creative and understand the need for measured risk taking
Promote equity, diversity and inclusion
Maintain high professional standards
Empower people to take responsibility and make decisions
We believe it takes a community to raise a child
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It is people who make change, so in order to ensure our therapeutic model is practiced and effective for the children we serve, we need people who believe in what we’re doing, who understand the ‘why’ or are open to learning, who align with our beliefs and mission. This goes for our staff team, foster carers and wider community members.
So, what does a CFC foster carer look like?
Aligns with our values
Mentally and physically resilient
Has a growth mindset (excited to continually learn, develop and engage in training)
Able to prioritise the needs of the child over all other commitments
Able to critically reflect and open to challenge and to be challenged in the pursuit of improving situations
Experience of working with or caring for children, young people or adults (you don’t need to be a parent already but you’ll have experience through family, volunteering or employment)
Committed to social justice and anti-discriminatory practice
Willing to work with professional network as a team player
Able to use IT or committed to learn
In practical reach of a Community Foster Care office
Has an appropriate home and suitable environment
Our People
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How will we support our foster carers to practice therapeutic fostering?
Ongoing learning and professional development opportunities which include: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Developmental and Relational Trauma, Attachment Theory, Therapeutic Parenting Preparation Training and a Therapeutic Fostering Assessment (rather than the traditional Form F)
Access to and training with highly skilled psychotherapists and organisational therapists
Regular reflective supervision with your Supervising Social Worker
Through the provision of regular work discussion and support groups with CFC staff and other foster carers
With strong and effective leadership
In an active affiliation with APPCIOS
By facilitation of the professional network to enable constructive reflection on the complex dynamics of parenting traumatised children and young people
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‘Pirate based social work’ is a term coined by Community Foster Care and requires some explanation and understanding. The term and concept was influenced by the book ‘Be More Pirate’ (Sam Conniff, 2018). He challenges the existing notions and portrayal of the golden age (17-18th century) pirates and instead shares a different narrative. He explains that pirates were highly skilled seamen, treated appallingly by the ‘self-interested’ elite at the time. They were conscripted to sea to fight for the Navy in battles with our European neighbours. The conditions they were exposed to were horrendous and would have caused deep rooted trauma. Furthermore, these deprived communities were not looked after and they did not benefit fairly from their difficult labour.
This highly skilled group of professionals felt that they needed to create a better existence for their families & communities. They wanted to challenge the unfairness and unacceptable treatment that they experienced. By banding together and collaborating they sought to create communities utilising their existing skill set, crucially informed by their reflections on their experiences and how they had been treated. This led to the establishment of pirate communities in which they created a number of important social justice principles that feel more at home in modern society. These include:
Each ship had its own pirate’s code which defined how the community would be together, setting out clear principles around power, reward and care
Sick and injury insurance – Pirates that were injured received payments to support them and cover their losses. This was the first example of social insurance
Dual governance structures with the Captain and Quarter Master ensured that there was balance within the power structures and all views were represented and had power
There is evidence of the acceptance of diversity and difference with early examples of same sex marriage
There was a spirit of collaboration and in empowering all members of the community
They were masterful storytellers, using these to further the needs of their community and establishing, perhaps, the first global ‘brand’
Being Pirate
We were able to draw strong parallels with the experience of children in the care system or from other disadvantaged groups. Similarly, in our professional experience as social workers, foster carers and social care professionals. Community Foster Care’s history and beginnings also screams of pirate ethos (before it was cool). We could take hope and inspiration from pirates and the actions they took to improve society. We’ve taken this inspiration and we seek to embed this approach into our work at Community Foster Care.
Pirate based Social Work means:
Empowered professionals taking responsibility and enabled to make decisions leading to positive change in communities or for individuals
Storytelling as an effective tool for promoting communication and understanding in order to challenge social injustice
Critical reflection and courage to challenge
Collaborating rather than seeking scale
Seeking cultural competence - promoting equity, diversity and inclusion
Sound professional standards
Being explorers rather than experts and recognising the need to take measured risks in the pursuit of positive change
It is underpinned by a belief in the power of community
Having the courage to challenge the unjust and ridiculous rules that exist within our work, that often lead to poor outcomes for children and young people