Fostering F to L

Home / : What is fostering? / Fostering A to Z / Fostering F to L

First Aid

Fostering households should have a basic first aid kit available to deal promptly with minor injuries. There should be training provided by all fostering agencies on basic first aid. The child’s parent should have given written consent for minor first aid to be applied.

Foster carer approval

The formal decision to approve potential foster carers lies with the Fostering Panel. Applicants will be invited to attend the Fostering Panel, when their application is being considered.

Foster Carer Contract/Agreement

The Foster Placement Agreement aims to promote and safeguard the child/young person’s welfare having regard for the Local Authority’s Social Service’s long and short-term arrangements for him or her and to treat him or her as a member of the foster carer’s family.

When foster carers are approved by their Fostering Agency they are required to enter into a written agreement. The agreement constitutes a statement of responsibilities, requirements and expectations of the partnership between the Agency and the approved foster carer.

The Agreement includes the foster carer’s agreement to:

notify Social Services immediately of any serious illness or occurrence affecting the child/young person.
to allow the child/young person to be removed from the foster carer’s care if the Fostering Agency/Social Services considers it is no longer in the child or young person’s interests to remain.
to attend any training sessions considered appropriate for the foster carer by the Fostering Agency

The Fostering Agency’s responsibilities to the foster carer are generally to:

provide payment for the care of children and young people placed
provide training, supervision, advice, information and support
provide a fostering social worker (linking social worker).

Foster Placement Agreement

A Local Authority Foster Placement Agreement is made for each child placed with the foster carer. Both the foster carer and the child’s social worker must sign it.

The Foster Placement Agreement sets out arrangements for the agreed arrangements for the care of the individual child placed. It also serves as a confirmation of what is expected from the foster carers and the Fostering Agency or Social Services, also what has been agreed with the child’s parent. Different requirements apply when a child is placed in an emergency.

The Foster Placement Agreement covers:

essential information necessary to care for the child, such as, the arrangements for the child; the objectives of the placement; the child’s personal history, religion, cultural and linguistic background and racial origin.
the child’s state of health and any need for health care and monitoring
the child’s educational needs
support of the child during the placement
arrangements for delegating medical consent for examination and treatment of the child.
the circumstances on which it is necessary to obtain the approval for the child to live, even temporarily, away from the foster carers’ home.

Fostering

Fostering is usually a temporary way of offering children a home until they can return to their own families. Maintaining links with the child’s family are very important whilst planning and decisions are made about the future, and the foster carer is very important in helping the child to understand and cope with the situation they find themselves in.

Types of fostering

There are different types of foster care depending on the needs of both the child and their family. These include short-term care for just a few days or weeks, to long-term placements, as well as care for disabled children or children with behavioural problems.

Categories of foster care:

Emergency

When children need somewhere safe to stay for a few nights

Short-term

When carers look after children for a few weeks or months, while plans are made for the child's future

Short breaks

When disabled children, children with special needs or children with behavioural difficulties regularly stay for a short time with a family, so that their parents or usual foster carers can have a break

Remand

When young people are remanded by a court to the care of a specially trained foster carer

Parent and child

Some parents are young or have a learning disability and do not have the benefit of a stable and supportive home to help them in acquiring the necessary skills to look after their baby.

Parent and baby foster carers provide a foster home for the parent and their baby. The foster carer plays an important role in assessing the progress of the parent in caring for their baby and contributes to the future care planning.

Long-term

Not all children who need to permanently live away from their birth family want to be adopted, so instead they go into long-term foster care until they are adults

'Family and friends' or 'kinship'

A child who is the responsibility of the local authority goes to live with someone they already know, which usually means family members such as grandparents, aunts and uncles or their brother or sister

Specialist therapeutic

For children and young people with very complex needs and/or challenging behaviour.

Form F

This is the official form that the fostering and adoption social worker will fill in when conducting the home study part of the procedure.

It comes in two parts. The first part deals with factual information including what sort of children the applicant is seeking to foster or adopt. The second part is a more subjective assessment and profile of the applicants, based on a series of visits by the social work to the applicants' home.

Gardens and other outside areas

The absence of a garden is not a reason for rejecting an application. Attention nevertheless needs to be given to two specific issues. Firstly, health and safety, and secondly, the availability of appropriate space for children to play and explore as part of their healthy development.

When assessing applications where there is no available garden, social workers will consider the proximity of appropriate parks or other play areas as well as the applicant’s willingness to make these accessible to children, especially younger children, on a regular basis.

This will also be an issue to consider at the matching stage if the child has pets that need to be accommodated outside.

Guardian

Children’s Guardians are qualified and experienced in Social Work. They are appointed by the Court to represent the rights and interests of children in cases that involve Social Services. They are independent of Social Services, courts and everyone else involved in the case. Children’s Guardians are there to help achieve the best possible outcomes for the children they represent. In particular, they may not recommend what Social Services or the child wants to happen.

Children’s Guardians:

appoint a solicitor for the children who specialises in working with children and families
advise the court about what work needs to be done before the court makes its decision.
write a report for the court saying what they think would be best for the children. The report must tell the court about the wishes and feelings of the children.

Children’s Guardians:

meet members of their family. They talk to other people who know the family, such as relatives, teachers, social workers and health visitors
attend meetings on behalf of the children, check records and read reports and statements
they may recommend to the court that other professionals are asked to help, such as a Paediatrician or a Psychologist.

The court takes careful notice of what the Children’s Guardian says. If a court disagrees with what a Children’s Guardian has recommended it will explain why.

Health and Safety

All Fostering services are required by the Fostering Services Regulations 2002 to obtain certain information before considering whether the applicant is suitable to act as a foster carer and that their household is suitable for any child in respect of which approval may be given. This includes details of the applicant’s accommodation.

The National Minimum Standards for Fostering Services require that the home and immediate environment are free of avoidable hazards that might expose a child to risk of injury or harm and contain safety barriers and equipment appropriate to the child’s age, development and level of ability.

Foster homes are required to be inspected annually to make sure that they meet the needs of foster children. Standards require that fostering services have a comprehensive health and safety policy in place.

Holidays

There is an expectation that foster carer’s caring for children on a short-term basis will take foster children on a family holiday with them if the placement coincides with the holiday.

In situations where this is not possible, Fostering Agencies provide various forms of respite foster care.

Foster carers who care for long-term children should include the children in all family holidays as they are seen as permanent members of the family.

Second homes/holidays

Most of the elements of a fostering household’s safe care policy will be about behaviour in the foster carer’s family home. Foster carers will need to take account of the potential behaviours and risk factors within other environments they might stay in from time to time. This will include where the foster carer and child are going on holiday, where the foster carer has a second home or use of a caravan.

Holidays Abroad

If foster carers are thinking of taking a holiday abroad with a foster child, the Foster carer must give the child’s social worker plenty of notice of their plans. The particular legal status of the child or young person can have an effect on whether it is possible for them to leave the country. There may also be other reasons why a holiday abroad might not be in the best interest of the child or young person. If it is possible for the young person to leave the country, obtaining a passport can be a lengthy process, as can obtaining the required permissions.

Human Rights

Children's human rights

All children and young people up to the age of 18 years have all the rights in the Convention. Some groups of children and young people - for example those living away from home, and young disabled people - have additional rights to make sure they are treated fairly and their needs are met.

The UK ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) on 16 December 1991. That means the UK government now has to make sure that every child has all the rights outlined in the treaty except in those areas where the government has entered a specific reservation.

Every child in the UK is entitled to over 40 specific rights. These include:

the right to life, survival and development
the right to have their views respected, and to have their best interests considered at all times
the right to a name and nationality, freedom of expression, and access to information concerning them
the right to live in a family environment or alternative care, and to have contact with both parents wherever possible
health and welfare rights, including rights for disabled children, the right to health and health care, and social security
the right to education, leisure, culture and the arts
special protection for refugee children, children in the juvenile justice system, children deprived of their liberty and children suffering economic, sexual or other forms of exploitation

The rights included in the convention apply to all children and young people, with no exceptions

Independent Fostering Agencies

The number of independent fostering providers (IFPs) is rising. There are now over 300 registered IFPs in the UK, and they are expected to grow rapidly as long as the national shortage of foster carers, which currently stands at around 10,000, continues.

Demand began rising when children started moving out of children’s homes and approved schools into the community.

Insurance

All Fostering Agencies provide foster carer insurance cover through the scheme negotiated by the Fostering Network.

Intimate care

All children are vulnerable, particularly children with disabilities. Foster carers involved with their intimate care need to be sensitive to the child’s needs and also aware that some care tasks could be open to possible misinterpretation.

All children foster carers look after have a right to be safe and to be treated with dignity and respect.

Fostering Agencies should have basic guidelines on intimate care designed to help safeguard both children and foster carers. Guidelines are provided to ensure that everyone is clear about the issues that need to be considered before approaching intimate care tasks.

Learning disability

A child with a general learning disability finds it more difficult to learn, understand and do things compared to other children of the same age. The degree of disability varies. Some children will never learn to speak and will need help with looking after themselves for life; feeding, dressing or going to the toilet. On the other hand, the disability may be mild and the child will grow up to become independent.

General learning disability is different from specific learning difficulty, which means that the person finds one particular thing hard, but manages well in everything else. For example, a child can have a specific learning difficulty in reading, writing or understanding what is said to them, but have no problem with learning in other areas of life.

Life Story Work

Life story work is a method of helping children in care to learn about the events in their lives. Children separated from their birth families may have lived with a number of different families; they may have changed social workers, homes and neighbourhoods. Their past may be lost, confused and much of it forgotten.

All children are entitled to accurate information about their past and their family. When children lose track of their past, they may well find it difficult to develop emotionally and socially. If adults cannot or do not discuss this past with them it is reasonable for children to assume that it may be bad.

Putting together facts about a child’s life and the significant events and people in it helps children to begin to understand and accept their past and move forward into adulthood as a more resilient person.

Life story work gives foster carers the opportunity to show foster children why they should be proud of themselves.

Local Authority / Health Social Services Trusts

The Local Authorities / Health Social Services Trusts are ultimately responsible for the well being of all children in public care. They need to find the best way of looking after these children to make sure that they receive the best possible standard of care.

Simply Fostering

Current page is 2.7.2: Fostering F to L