Foster parents and young people who’ve been in care have helped design our training.
At Changing Futures Fostering we believe that support for foster parents is key to providing sustainable, supportive environments to children and young people. By providing robust and resilient support we feel the structure of what we offer will help our foster parents to provide the highest quality of care that is flexible and adapts with each child’s needs. From the start, our foster parents will receive support tailored to their needs, from introducing you to the agency through to providing sessions with family members and children/young people who are part of the fostering household.
There is a critical shortage of local foster parents, and just as crucially a shortage of foster parents that are equipped with trauma informed training and support. The impact of years of cumulative neglect on a child, or severe trauma, can leave scars that make it difficult for them to trust, love and feel loved, and feel safe. This can make it difficult to parent them effectively and difficult to place them.
Our training which is 10 sessions of approximately 2 hours each will address areas including why children become looked after, child development, safer caring and life chances. It will give you key practical training that provides the tools and techniques needed in real life fostering. We’re jargon free and clear about why and when you should use the training approaches to help care for the child you are looking after. We use lots of therapeutic and theoretical knowledge to underpin the training and support we offer but we do it in a way that feels achievable and has our foster parents, children and young people at the heart of all we do.
We also provide psychological support for foster parents to help them understand children and young people’s feelings and behaviours and how to help them and deal with difficult situations well. Learning is a process and it doesn’t end with training… in fact really that’s just the start! If you foster with us, you’ll come to monthly group meetings with other foster parents supported by a skilled psychotherapist who will help you build and develop your skills.
The video below features Sally! A very important part of the foster parent experience! We are so lucky to have her on board! Sally was Clinical Lead in Specialist Fostering and Adoption Service for over 10 years, and has over 30 years experience in Child and Adolescents Mental Health service. Sally will be providing ongoing support in developing and delivering therapeutic training to potential foster parents. Sally helped us consult foster parents and young people who have been looked after, she then helped us develop our fostering training based on that feedback.