Supporting you to support the child
The relationship that a permanent foster family has with their agency is incredibly important, and involves regular contact with your child’s social worker, your agency’s supervising social worker, and other professionals. The level of such support depends on the agency you join, and the needs of the child that joins you.
For a look at different types of fostering agencies, and the financial gains you are entitled to as a foster carer, please visit these sections of the website:
Most agencies prefer to work with families who live nearby, so the child can stay close to their family, friends and community, but many will work with families within a 50-mile radius.
Prospective permanent foster families should contact different local and neighbouring agencies to find the one that best suits them and the child they are hoping to be matched with.
Read on to find out how Eleanor and Ivor support families at their agency...
Eleanor, Managing Director at Family Matters Fostering
Our policy is to provide an extended family-like structure. As an agency, we deal with the formal side of fostering, but we also share in celebrations with the carers. In a sense, we are part of that family. Our foster carers keep in touch on a daily basis, and this gives them a solid framework of support.
We are fortunate in that we have virtually no turnover of staff. Link workers are involved with the same families, year in, year out. They have monthly supervision with them, for example, which gives carers an opportunity to talk about things they are finding difficult, and clarify any necessary training.
We work to our strengths, and one of these is supporting families who foster children with learning disabilities. One of our families is fostering a young man who presents as much younger than his years because of his learning difficulties and occasional violent outbursts. We have an education resources co-ordinator who stands shoulder to shoulder with that young man’s college and his foster carers, so that he knows that, though the boundaries are there, he is very much loved, whether angry or not.
We also support lots of families permanently fostering sibling groups. In that situation, though they are a group, you are caring for different individual needs. One of our families, for example, was permanently fostering a large sibling group. Some time after joining the family, it was agreed that the needs of the oldest child would be better met if he moved in with his short break carers. That boy is now at college, has an incredibly close relationship with his brothers, and continues to see his previous permanent foster carers. The case is indicative of the kind of support we provide, which, though not unstructured, is fluid because it is based on the changing needs of the child and foster carers.
We want carers to feel part of an integrated organisation, and we do this by aiming to recreate the extended family. Our agency has a senior carer, who I regard as a grandparent figure – a mentor, with bags of fostering experience, who takes the role of organising social events that all our carers are invited to. Our foster families are able to talk informally with each other, within the bounds of confidentiality, and their children get to know each other as cousins would.
Ivor, Team Manager at Birmingham’s Social Services’ Long-term Fostering Team
At the centre of everything is the child, but the primary agent of change is the carer. We support the family so that they can support the child.
Some people think of long-term placements as relatively stable, but we take the opposite view. Children being permanently fostered are often older children or adolescents who have generally endured significant lack of care and may come with complex needs. They will not ‘spontaneously recover’, but instead need support to build a positive, trusting relationship with their carers. That’s where we come in.
There is formal supervision every three months with our families, as well as monthly informal visits. If there are problems, somebody is always available to take their call. Because our team has been fairly stable over the last few years, everyone has a good knowledge of our carers.
For some children, further support may be needed – for example, disabled children, or those with special needs. We have specialist teams and nurses available to give advice and guidance. We offer support with aids and adaptations, and we have a conditional grants system for things like house conversions. If people need short break care, we try to arrange that on a consistent basis. Some families may need extra support around a child having direct contact. We convey to our permanent foster carers that it is possible to work in conjunction with the birth family, and that we are not here to pass judgement.
Families can also get support through the Birmingham Foster Carers Association, which represents all the carers in the city. We work closely with them, and let carers in difficulty know that they can go to them too for support.
As told to Sophie Offord.
Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in January 2008.
This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.
Last updated: 04 January 08
