An essential part of your journey to becoming a foster carer is your Skills to Foster Training. This training is a mandatory part of your assessment process; if you have a partner living with you, you’ll both need to attend the course.
What is Skills to Foster Training?
Our Skills to Foster course is an intensive 3-day mandatory training course designed to give you an introduction to fostering.
Led by one of our experienced Social Workers, Our Skills to Foster training programme supports prospective foster carers in developing their understanding of fostering. The course makes sure you’re equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to keep the children in your care safe.
What Does the Training Cover?
The Skills to Foster Training course has been specially designed to help prepare foster carers for the challenges and rewards that caring for vulnerable children can bring.
Over the three days, you’ll cover a range of topics, including:
- The role of a foster carer. Understanding what fostering a child involves, including your responsibilities and duties as a foster carer.
- Why children come into care. Exploring the different reasons why children come into care.
- Childhood trauma, attachment and development. Recognising the impact that children’s difficult life experiences can have on their development and behaviour.
- Our REACH Approach to care. Taking a look at our therapeutic REACH approach to child care, and how this will inform your work as a foster carer.
- Understanding challenging behaviour. Recognising the types of challenging behaviour children in care might display, and how foster parents can promote the development of positive attachments and relationships.
- Life chances for children in care. Acknowledging the prejudice and discrimination children in care may face, and how foster parents can combat this.
- Safer caring. Understanding the different ways children in foster care are considered vulnerable and how foster parents can safeguard them.
These are just a handful of the various topics that our Skills to Foster training programme explores. Though three days might seem like a long time, many people say it flies by!
How Will it Help Me?
Whatever understanding or experience you may have when it comes to child care, there is always room to learn! Fostering vulnerable children requires a specialist skill set; our Skills to Foster training aims to give applicants a foundation upon which they can continue developing their skills and expertise.
Skills to Foster training also gives you a chance to ask any questions you have and voice any concerns in a welcoming, understanding, and empathetic setting. The training is held in a group, allowing you to meet and speak with other potential foster carers while you’re there. This will give you a taste of what belonging to a fostering community is like, and helping you connect with other potential applicants like yourself.
Alongside increasing your understanding of fostering and everything that’s involved, many of our applicants report that the Skills to Foster training helped them really consider whether fostering was the right choice for them.
Though rewarding in many ways, fostering vulnerable children also comes with its own unique set of challenges. Your Skills to Foster training will guide you in deciding whether you would like to continue with your application to become a foster carer.
While we’d love for you to remain with us during the assessment process, it’s better to withdraw sooner rather than later, to avoid causing more disruption for a foster child placed in your care.
If you decide to continue on in your journey to becoming a foster carer, you’ll move on to your next – and final – step of the assessment process: your Fostering Panel.