Helping you get the best from fostering

So much of the success of every placement depends on the quality of support we are able to offer you. Equally as important, though, is the professional training and development we deliver to give you the skills you need to cope with whatever comes your way as a carer.

Our portfolio of programmes is specifically tailored to meet the demanding needs of fostering, as well as those of the children and young people you look after.

Access to your learning is as flexible as possible, so that it can fit in with your childcare responsibilities, as well as all of the other commitments in your busy lives.

We can discuss your needs and put together a plan, based on what’s best for you. This might include one-to-one courses, either face-to-face or online, practice-based or virtual workshops, webinar events or online training. Training can also often be delivered at weekends as well as during office hours.

The support doesn’t stop there though. As well as more formal learning, we believe that nothing is as helpful as learning from your peers, so you will also be invited to meet other foster carers in our community to share the lived experiences of like-minded individuals and benefit from their invaluable insight, knowledge and experience.

Ongoing training opportunities

Even experienced foster carers will benefit from ongoing learning.

We continue to provide training and 24/7 support through both online and face-to-face courses to help you continue to develop the abilities, strengths, and qualities you need to care for the children you are looking after.

We will also help keep you up-to-date with current best practices and any changes in regulations.

All our foster carers will be supported to complete the Training and Development Standards once approved.

We want every child to thrive, emotionally and physically, gain new skills, and achieve as much as they can in their education.

We want them to be able to participate in and contribute positively to our society.

You can make such an amazing difference to someone’s life as a foster carer, but you can’t do that all on your own. So please take full advantage of the training and development available to you.

We want to show you how much we value what you are doing.

THERAPEUTIC SUPPORT

Most of us would agree that it is often the smallest of things that can make the biggest difference and connection with children and young people.

These are the moments that are therapeutic and allow us to discover all that is unique and important about the children and young people sharing our lives.

Therapeutic support can be thought of as ways of caring, responding, sharing, and connecting in a relationship of importance that deepens through daily shared interaction and over time.

These relationships are guided by our sense of what is best for the children.

At Foundation Fostering we are defined by a unique approach that is shared and embedded across our fostering family and community.

We support our foster carers and their families through a trauma-informed and attachment-focused therapeutic parenting model of training, drawing on and informed by neuroscience, psychology, and social science as well as attachment and trauma research
Through our training and shared lived experience coupled with research, ideas, and emerging practice in the wider world, we are developing ways of caregiving that offer healing family environments
Through understanding and compassion, we make sense of behaviour and create structure, routine, and boundaries that deliver safety and security
We nurture our relationships whilst reflecting upon and learning from our lives together and celebrating steps of progress
We take care of each other and understand the value of the work each of us does in building and sustaining the ethos of our fostering community

Our dedicated therapeutic lead – Ian Taylor – has over thirty years of experience in Social Work, Therapeutic Communities, and Adolescent Forensic Services.

- He is a trauma-informed and therapeutic practitioner with extensive direct practice experience and training and grounding in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), and Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS).

Our therapeutic approach and training are supported and integrated alongside individual and group therapeutic work with children, young people, and our foster families, in addition to monthly reflective practice groups.

01684 311555

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