becoming a foster carer

Once you have decided upon the service you would like to foster with, contact them to enquire and have an initial discussion about fostering and for the service to find out a little about you. You may be invited to attend an information session or the fostering service will offer for a member of their team to come out and visit you in your home to have a discussion about fostering.

Just as no two children are the same, foster carers need to come from a variety of backgrounds and have different life experiences, skills and qualities to help meet the needs of children and young people in foster care. You can be a foster carer without having any specific qualifications, and you don't need to have children of your own. What's important is that you can support, nurture and care for children who cannot live with their own families.

Every year, tens of thousands of children across the UK need foster carers while they can’t live with their birth families. This means that thousands of new foster families are needed every year. Foster carers can make a real difference to children's lives - and that's a hugely rewarding job.