Foster carers keep children safe and help them to achieve their potential within a tightly regulated service that places many expectations on them and requires that they have a thorough understanding of child development and the legislative and regulatory system within which they work.
Depending on the needs and age of the children that they are looking after, foster carers also require an understanding of the education and healthcare systems, mental health issues, drug and alcohol dependency, child sexual exploitation, the asylum system and so on. All of this means that foster carers must be very skilled and knowledgeable.
Ongoing learning and development are vital for foster carers to ensure they remain up to date with fostering practices and to ensure they have the skills to look after the children in their care.
Expectations
Expectations regarding the learning and development needs of foster carers, once approved, are currently inconsistent across the four nations of the UK.
- In England, all foster carers must complete Training Support Development Standards (within 12 months of approval for foster carers and 18 months for kinship carers). However, there is nothing in England that covers expectations after foster carers have met the induction standards.
- There are no induction standards nor learning and development frameworks for foster carers in Northern Ireland and Scotland, although the Scottish Government is currently developing a framework.
- In Wales there is the All Wales Induction Framework for Health and Social Care, which is not mandatory for foster carers, but it is expected that they will complete this.
Each fostering service will have their own expectations as to how much ongoing learning and development a foster carer should undertake each year, as well as their own training provision. This means access to training, as well as its quality, can vary from service to service – and this is something that potential foster carers should explore with a service before approval. Every service must ensure that they provide foster carers with the training they require to meet the needs of the children in their care.
The ongoing learning and development of foster carers will form part of their annual review. It is sensible for foster carers to keep an up-to-date list of the training they have attended over the year, as well as any other reading or relevant activities they have done.
The usual training offer
Despite the variation in expectations, in almost every case there is a minimum level of training that foster carers will undertake. These include:
- Pre-approval training - such as The Fostering Network’s The Skills to Foster™ course.
- Induction training for newly approved foster carers - introducing them to aspects of fostering not covered in the Skills to Foster, as well as how the fostering service operates.
- Training, support and development standards (TSDS), England only - a statutory part of the National Minimum Standards and the workbook
- Mandatory training - this is training that the fostering service expects that a foster carer will undertake on a regular basis (often every two or three years), and may include:
- Safeguarding
- Child protection
- Safer caring
- First aid
- Attachment
- Other training – most fostering services will expect their foster carers to attend a certain amount of training or do relevant reading each year. Courses offered will vary significantly, but some examples may include:
- Life story work
- Trauma
- Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD)
- Digital skills
- Foster carer tax and finances
- Unaccompanied asylum seeking Children
How we can help foster carers
- The Fostering Network has a range of courses that foster carers can sign up to. See our Open Courses page for more information.
- We also publish guides and other books to support foster carers as they develop their skills and knowledge. See our fostering resources website for more details.
- Our advice lines provide confidential, independent and impartial advice for foster carers in the UK.
- Our members also have exclusive access to our online community where you can log in to share your experience and get advice from other foster carers.