What happens on the Skills to Foster course?

Somewhere between your first phone call and your fostering panel, you will be asked to spend 2 or 3 days on a preparation course. Most people arrive at it slightly nervous, half expecting a test. It is not a test. It is the part of the process where fostering stops being an idea you have been turning over and starts being something you can picture doing on a Tuesday evening in your own kitchen.

What the Skills to Foster course actually is

The Skills to Foster is a preparation course for people applying to foster. It is not a government programme and it is not something each agency invents for itself. It is a training product produced by The Fostering Network, which describes it as “the UK’s leading preparation training course for prospective foster carers” and holds it as a registered trademark.

That matters more than it sounds. Because one organisation writes the material, applicants at very different agencies across England sit through broadly the same six sessions. When a carer who trained in Kent in 2019 tells you what the course was like, they are usually describing something close to what you will get.

The Fostering Network delivers it over three days, to a maximum of twelve fostering households at a time, in person or live online. It carries eighteen hours of CPD certification. Applicants get the course workbook and access to eLearning alongside the sessions themselves.

Not every fostering service uses it, though, and this is worth knowing before you compare agencies. “Preparation training” and “the Skills to Foster” are not automatically the same thing. Some services run their own in-house course and call it preparation training, which may be perfectly good, but it is a fair question to ask.

The six sessions

The Fostering Network publishes the session list, so you can see in advance what the three days cover:

• What children need. Why children come into care, and what the experience of it is actually like from a child’s side of it.
• Fostering relationships. Working with a child’s family, with social workers, with schools, and with your own household.
• A protective and loving home. Safer caring, and what keeping a child safe looks like in the ordinary run of a week.
• Therapeutic care. Responding to a child who is having trouble coping, rather than reacting to the behaviour in front of you.
• Supporting identity. Culture, faith, heritage and language, and how you help a child hold on to who they are.
• Transitions and endings. What happens when a child moves on, and how you and your family manage that.

Read that list again and notice what is missing. There is very little about paperwork and nothing about how to run a household. The course is built almost entirely around the child’s experience, which is the single best clue to what the fostering task actually is.

What the rules say you are entitled to

There is a widely held belief that preparation training is legally compulsory. It is a little more interesting than that. The Department for Education’s statutory guidance on the assessment and approval of foster carers sets out the two-stage assessment in detail and does not mention preparation training at all.

The requirement sits instead in the National Minimum Standards for fostering services. Standard 13.3 says:

“Prospective foster carers are prepared to become foster carers in a way which addresses, and gives practical techniques to manage, the issues they are likely to encounter and identifies the competencies and strengths they have or need to develop.”

So the standard requires that you are prepared. It does not name a course, which is why services are free to choose how they do it. And notice the last clause, because most people skate over it: preparation is also meant to identify what you are already good at and what you still need to build.

The same standard gives you something you can actually use. Standard 13.4 says the assessment process must be set out clearly to prospective foster carers, including:

• “the qualities, skills or aptitudes being sought or to be achieved;”
• “the standards to be applied in the assessment;”
• “the stages and content of the selection process and where possible timescales involved;”
• “the information to be given to applicants.”

If you are three weeks in and still unclear what is being looked for or how long any of it takes, you are not being demanding by asking. You are asking for something the standards say should already have been explained to you.

Is it a test?

No, and yes, and the honest answer is in the middle.

Nobody marks you. There is no pass list at the end and no certificate you can fail to get. The course is not the assessment, and the assessment is a separate piece of work built around a detailed report that goes to fostering panel.

But Standard 13.3 says preparation identifies competencies and development needs, and that information does not evaporate when the three days end. Assessing social workers commonly attend some of the sessions or receive feedback from the trainers. What you say in the room can legitimately feed into how you are assessed.

Which sounds alarming until you think about what it means in practice. The applicants who worry the assessors are not the ones who say “I have no idea how I would handle that.” They are the ones who say they would handle anything. Saying you do not know is a competent answer, and admitting you found a scenario difficult is the kind of self-knowledge the role runs on.

Who else is in the room

Up to twelve households, on The Fostering Network’s model. Not twelve people, twelve households, which tells you something about how the course is designed: it is priced and planned per household, not per applicant.

If you have a partner, expect both of you to be asked to attend. Fostering is something a household does rather than something one adult does while everyone else carries on as before, and the course is built on that assumption. If you are applying on your own, you will not be the only one there, and single people foster successfully all the time.

The other people in the room turn out to be a large part of the value. Some agencies bring in an experienced foster carer to help deliver sessions, and by day three you are usually swapping questions with the other households rather than waiting to be taught. Several of our carers are still in touch with people they met on preparation training years ago.

Where it sits in the process

The application runs in two stages. Stage one covers the checks and references; stage two is the full assessment, the home visits and the report. The Department for Education’s guidance confirms that “Stage 2 assessment information can be obtained, and the assessment carried out, in parallel with stage 1”, so the two overlap rather than queueing neatly.

Preparation training normally lands early, usually after your first home visit and while the assessment is getting under way. The guidance says a decision on stage one must be made “within 10 working days of all the stage 1 information being received”, and that a full assessment should let panel make a recommendation within eight months.

If you want the fuller picture of what comes before and after, our guide to the fostering assessment walks through the visits and the report, and the different types of foster care explains the choices you will be asked to think about before approval.

The other training you do before approval

The Skills to Foster is the centrepiece, but it is not the whole of it. Before approval most applicants also complete short courses in:

• first aid;
• safeguarding and safer caring;
• health and safety in the home.
• Positive Parenting
• Heling Children Stay Healthy

These are shorter and more practical, and they tend to be the ones people remember using. The health and safety session in particular connects directly to the check of your home, which is repeated every year after approval.

What preparation training is not

It is not the Training, Support and Development Standards, and people mix these up constantly.

The TSDS are a separate national framework you work through after approval, evidenced in a workbook with your supervising social worker. Standard 20.2 of the National Minimum Standards requires that foster carers are supported to achieve them, and Standard 20.3 says they must be evidenced “within 12 months of approval (or within 18 months for family and friends foster carers)”. There is a different version of the standards for short break carers.

You may see the eighteen month figure quoted for everyone. It is wrong for mainstream foster carers, and it is a common enough error that it is worth knowing which one applies to you.

Standard 20.1 adds that all new foster carers receive an induction. So the order is: preparation training, then panel, then approval, then induction, then twelve months to evidence the TSDS.

Three practical worries people raise

“I cannot take three days off work.” Say so at the enquiry stage rather than at the end. Courses run in different formats, including live online sessions, and dates repeat. Plenty of people foster alongside a job, and an agency that cannot flex on course dates is telling you something about how it will handle the rest of your life later.

“Will I be charged for it?” no – this training should always be free for you. If you are ever asked to pay for preparation training yourself, ask why.

“What if I get through it and decide fostering is not for me?” Then the course has done its job. That is a legitimate outcome, not a wasted three days, and it is a great deal better than discovering it with a child in the house. Withdrawing is always open to you, at this point or any other.

If you already foster somewhere else

Carers moving between agencies usually do not repeat preparation training, because they have already done it and have been approved on the strength of it. A transfer has its own process with its own timescales and its own traps, which we cover in our guide to transferring to a different fostering agency. The one thing worth repeating here: never resign from your current service before you have spoken to a new one.

What preparation training looks like at South Coast

Our own training and development page sets out where preparation sits for us. Before approval, preparation training including Skills to Foster explores the realities of the role: why children need care, safer caring, working with professionals and understanding a child’s experiences.

We run face-to-face learning, live online sessions and online resources, and we talk through the programme and your availability rather than handing you a fixed timetable. We are a small agency, which means the people who deliver and attend your preparation are the same people you will be ringing later.

After approval the learning does not stop. You get a named supervising social worker, structured training through your first year, and support that is available out of hours as well as in them. Some of what you learn on the course will only make sense once a child is actually in the house, which is why the first year matters as much as the three days.

You won’t have to do this alone

Preparation training is the first point in the process where fostering becomes concrete. You meet the people who do it, and you hear the scenarios. Mostly you find out whether the version of fostering in your head matches the real one. Most people come out of it more certain than they went in, in one direction or the other, and both answers are useful.

A child isn’t just given a home, they’re given a chance. Getting to the point where you can offer that starts with a conversation, not a commitment.

Frequently asked questions

How long is the Skills to Foster course?

The Fostering Network delivers it over three days, to a maximum of twelve fostering households, in person or live online. Its open access course runs from 09:15 to 16:30 each day and carries eighteen hours of CPD certification. Individual services may spread the same six sessions differently.

Do I have to pass the Skills to Foster course?

There is no pass or fail. It is preparation, not an examination, and the formal assessment is a separate piece of work that goes to fostering panel. That said, National Minimum Standard 13.3 says preparation should identify the competencies and strengths you have or need to develop, so what comes out of the course can inform your assessment.

Does my partner have to come too?

Normally yes. The course is designed and priced per household rather than per applicant, because fostering affects everyone who lives in the home. If your circumstances make that difficult, raise it early and ask what the options are.

Is preparation training the same as the Training, Support and Development Standards?

No. Preparation training happens before approval. The Training, Support and Development Standards are a separate national framework you evidence after approval, within twelve months for mainstream foster carers and within eighteen months for family and friends foster carers, under National Minimum Standard 20.3.

Can I change my mind after the course?

Yes, at any stage. Deciding fostering is not right for you is a reasonable outcome of preparation training and one the course is partly designed to surface. Nobody will press you to continue.

What if I already foster with another agency?

You will not usually repeat preparation training, because you have already completed it and been approved. Transferring has its own process and timescales, and the important rule is to speak to the new agency before resigning from your current one.