Foster Care Training Courses | Foster Parent Training

Training for foster parents

We pride ourselves on being a learning organisation and are proactive in helping both employees and our foster parents to develop their skills, knowledge and experience.

We are committed to providing high quality training programmes that our accessible and relevant to all of our foster carers.

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Our foster care training courses

Prepare to Foster

All of our foster parents complete “Prepare to Foster” – a pre-approval training course during their assessment that explores:

Next Steps on their journey to become a foster parent
What it is like to be a young person in foster care
Knowledge and skills required to prepare them to be foster parents such as the role of a foster parent, caring for children, working together, understanding children and young people, safer caring, promoting resilience and successful outcomes, transitions – moving on.

Induction

We have an online induction course which looks at the key areas to equip foster parents with the necessary skills and confidence to take their first child/young person.

Mandatory training

Once approved, there is a comprehensive programme of ongoing foster carer training and development available; starting with mandatory courses that all foster parents will receive.

These include more specific training in Safeguarding, Emergency First Aid, Medication and Health Care, Health and Safety in the Home, Managing Challenging Behaviour and Safer Caring and must be completed within the first year.

Complementary training

We actively encourage and support our foster parents to develop their skills and knowledge. We have a wide range of courses available both as online training and face to face training that will be discussed with foster carers and will inform their Personal Development Plan to further develop knowledge and skills in particular to meet the specific needs of particular fostered children, or in more specialist areas or approaches. These courses help to develop the practice of foster carers offering a greater depth of knowledge, theory and practical application.

These include:

Working with children with disabilities
Caring for unaccompanied asylum seeking children
Children moving from residential care
Parent and child
Therapeutic courses
Other safeguarding topics such as child sexual exploitation, county lines, e-safety and radicalisation

Joint training sessions available

We believe in learning alongside peers and offer joint training sessions for both staff and foster parents to enable the sharing of best practice and experiences.

Foster parents are expected to take responsibility for their own learning and demonstrate ongoing personal and professional development. In a joint foster parent household, it is our expectation that both foster parents complete the mandatory training in the first year and then on an ongoing basis continue to meet the minimum training requirements in subsequent years.

All our training is mapped to regulations and national minimum standards and cross-referenced to the Training Support and Development Standards in England and the Induction Framework Outcomes in Wales.

There is a wide range of online and face-to-face training available, which we can fit in around caring for our foster children. We’ve also benefitted from FCA’s peer support groups, where we can meet other carers and share experiences. This is great to help us reflect on the care we give, learn from others and develop new strategies and skills.

Jo & Lisa – Birmingham

Other benefits of working with FCA

Foster parent support

From dedicated social workers to therapists, our wrap-around, 24/7 support provides you with a network of professionals who are here to help.

Our support network

Foster children support

We are focused on the needs of the children and young people we look after, so we’ve built up a strong framework of support to help them flourish.

How we support foster children

Generous Fostering Allowances

We provide a generous allowance to all our foster parents and also provide a unique rewards platform.

Our fostering allowances

Get in touch

Whether you’re ready to start your journey or just want to chat, contact our fostering team today and we’ll answer all your questions.

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