Everyone has different reasons for becoming a foster carer. Some people have experience of social care in their personal or working background. Others find they have an opportunity to host foster families because of a change in work or children having flown the nest.
But what are the benefits of foster caring?
Fostering can be as rewarding financially as it can be emotionally. Little, or no tax on a weekly subsistence that starts at over £350 and can increase to almost £750. See our notes below or call for more details.
The amount you receive in fostering allowance varies from placement to placement. Some children have more challenging needs than others and this will be reflected in the allowance you receive. Allowances for older children are generally higher than those for younger children.
Weekly allowances range from £350 to £750. Your fostering allowance covers both income to you for your time and effort and the costs of looking after a foster child. These include:
You know the needs of the child placed with you best and so you’ll be able to choose how to spend your fostering payment.
Tax Information When you foster with the Foundation you’ll be classed as self-employed. This means you’ll be entitled to tax relief on your fostering income and you’ll pay very little, or no, tax and national insurance.
The tax relief you’ll receive depends on your financial circumstances and you’ll still need to complete a tax return. For further information about working out your taxable income and eligibility for claiming working tax credit, visit the HMRC website (link below).
HMRC has also created a dedicated Foster Care eLearning package which offers Foster Carers guidance, advice and practical tips relating to tax and National Insurance, visit the HMRC website
We would love to hear from you if you are an existing foster carer and are considering joining our ‘family’ of foster carers. Take a look below to see how easy it is to join us.
How to transfer: Looking to transfer from your current agency or local authority?
Joining the Fostering Foundation is easy because we support you every step of the way. If you’re thinking about transferring to us, get in touch and we’ll arrange to visit you at home to have a chat about what’s involved. We’ll work with you, your existing agency, and the local authority to make sure everyone understands what will happen and that any children or young people placed with you are fully supported too. Remember that foster carers can only be approved by one fostering agency at any one time. The transfer process is slightly different depending on whether you have a child or young person placed with you when you decide to transfer.
Home Visit : We will arrange for our dedicated recruitment officer to visit you in your home or undertake a virtual visit when it is convenient to you. This is an informal visit so you can ask questions about fostering. There is absolutely no pressure to commit.
We shall discuss the types of children that need to be looked after, what to expect at each stage of the process, and the support you can expect from us. If you want to proceed and apply to become a foster carer we will send/email an application form for you to complete – or we can complete it together.
The Assessment
As part of your application you will have given us permission to carry out references and checks. These include:
You will also be introduced to your assessing social worker and together you will agree a time/day to begin the assessment. Although it is a robust assessment it gives us both the chance to really get to know you and able to find what type of fostering will be right for you and your family. Our foster carers tell us the assessment process is really interesting and insightful. The assessment will take between 4 and 6 months to complete.
Pre-Approval Training:
We run compulsory training for all potential foster carers. This course is called Skills to Foster and will help you to:
You will get the chance to meet like-minded people who are preparing to foster or are currently approved fostering households. We will also invite you along to other training courses during the assessment with our foster carers which will add to your ‘tool kit’.
Meeting the Panel and Approval:
Once your assessment has been completed and you have agreed to the report, this is sent to our independent fostering panel members for them to read. A panel is an experienced group of people across professions such as social work, family law, health, and education. Some panel members will have prior experience being foster carers themselves or have worked with children and young people.
You will be invited to meet the panel and discuss your assessment. The panel will then make recommendations for you to be approved as foster carers to our agency decision maker (ADM) who then makes the final decision about your approval and the types of fostering you are best suited for; ie long-term, short-term (including parent & child and resilience) and/or respite options.
Matching you with a child or parent & child: Once you have been approved we will share with you information about children or parents and children who need a fostering home from the numerous Local Authorities we work with. And so your journey starts – and you begin to make a positive change to a child’s life. Welcome to becoming a part of our fostering family.
According to The Children Act 1989, children should remain living within their family unit wherever possible. The specialist provision of a Parent and Child (P&C) fostering household ensures this, whilst the need for more statutory intervention and specialist assessments takes place. A P&C provision can also accommodate an expectant mum, preparing to deliver. Sometimes, parents to be, are also still children themselves. Parents (mother / father / both) can also be placed in a foster home together with their baby / child / children. The needs will vary but TFF specially trained foster carers look after the parent(s) and child and ensure safety while the parent(s) are assessed by an independent assessor usually from the local authority or appointed by the Court.
Sanctuary-seeking young people entering the UK are also known as Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC). These children have known unimaginable terrors such as persecution, war, famine and abuse in their country of origin. They are often sent away with little or no knowledge of where they are going or with whom. Once they arrive they find themselves in an ‘alien’ country, hearing an unfamiliar language, separated from everything they know and love. They are, by definition, without their parents or carers, extended family and siblings. They have the misfortune of having been born into a society that does not value basic human rights but by joining TFF UASC specialist fostering households, they are given the opportunity to get their lives started once more.
Very often, children that have lived in the same fostering household for a long period of time become regarded as a member of the family. Once they reach adulthood they are considered to be ‘care experienced adults’ , no longer children in care. Despite this, some young adults are not ready for, or want their independence. In circumstances such as this, some care experienced adults have agreement from their placing local authority and previous foster carers to remain living as part of the household under a ‘Staying Put’ arrangement, which can also be supported with a financial package, until the age of 21.
Due to having previously been identified, via the courts, as being at risk of significant harm (S.31, CA 1989), some children will unavoidably spend the majority of their childhoods in care, in order to keep them safe. For some children, SGO or Adoption are also not viable options, and, this is where long term fostering fits. Long term foster carers recognise that they have the skill base to be able to offer a longer term home to children and young people who might have already experienced multiple moves during their childhoods, through no fault of their own, and are now needing the security that ‘permanency’ offers via long term fostering.
Sometimes children need a place of safety to stay whilst their longer term future is decided; whether this be reunification with birth parent/s or with extended family members, long term fostering, or via permanency options such as Special Guardianship Order (SGO) or Adoption. Short term fostering supports with this and is ideally suited to foster carers, with the right skill base, wanting to offer a positive ‘home from home’ experience to children whose previous ‘placement’ might have broken down or for those children who might be coming into care for the very first time.
An integral part of fostering is the ability to place siblings together, whenever and wherever possible, if that is what has been determined to be in their best interests by the placing authority. Whether you are short or long term fostering, if you have the space to offer a home to two or more siblings you can be a key part of creating some semblance of normality for children whose world might have been turned ‘upside down’. Your commitment to offering your home to brothers and/or sisters ensures they are able to remain together and not be split up, enabling them to spend quality time and positive memory making experiences together.
Sometimes children need to be removed from harm in an unplanned, emergency, situation. In circumstances such as this, very often little is known about the child, only their immediate need to be safeguarded. Details will always follow and the appropriate support provided. Respite care, on the other hand, is invariably a planned move, set up to provide a short break for families or other foster carers. Remand fostering is an alternative to police custody, which is never child centric. It is a specialised form of fostering that ensures children, believed to be involved in criminality, are given the time and space to think about what needs to change.
In addition to the above, often as a result of complex trauma, some children in care can display challenging behaviours such as shouting and showing aggression to externalise how scared and uncertain they are feeling. Alternatively, some children will internalise their feelings and become non communicative, quiet and withdrawn. This is where our foster carers benefit from the support of both our Therapeutic Practitioner and our Support Worker, using the models we promote ie PACE and DDP. If you are coming from a health & social care sectors background; police, probation, nursing, education etc this means your transferrable skills are ideally suited to complex fostering.