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Five questions worth asking before you choose a fostering agency.
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Everyone in fostering says PACE, and almost nobody explains it. Here is what playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy each mean, what they sound like at your own kitchen table, why acceptance has nothing to do with dropping your house rules, and what the fostering standards and NICE actually say your agency should be offering you.
You do not need to be a nurse to foster a disabled child. What the week really involves: appointments, the EHC plan and the SEND reforms, broken nights, finding a way to talk together, Disability Living Allowance, the equipment the standards say you must be given, and looking after yourself.
NICE names children in care as one of eleven groups more likely to have ADHD. Here is what ADHD actually is, how an assessment works and how long it takes, what helps at home, and the question that catches carers out: who is allowed to consent to medication.
Autism is something a child is born with, not something that happened to them. What you might notice at home, what the NHS and the school are supposed to do, how long an assessment really takes, and what actually helps day to day.
Kent and Hampshire look after more young people who arrived in the UK alone than any other councils in England, yet most of them are not living with a family. What caring for one involves: the first days, language and faith, the asylum interview, age disputes, family tracing and turning 18.
“Continuing care” turns up in a child’s paperwork and nobody explains it. Here is what it means in England, who decides it, the six-week timescale, the personal health budget most carers are never told about, and the questions worth asking.
Two words get used constantly in fostering and explained hardly at all. Here is what attachment and trauma actually mean, what the National Minimum Standards and NICE really say about them, the questionnaire you will be asked to fill in every year, and the training your agency should be offering you.
Fostering siblings sounds simple until you read the law. What the Children Act 1989 actually requires, why 37 per cent of children in care live apart from their brothers and sisters, the three-child fostering limit and its little-known exception, and what South Coast pays for each child.
A room-by-room walk through the fostering home safety check: what the National Minimum Standards actually require, what a social worker looks at, and what to sort out before a child arrives.
Fostering money behaves differently from a wage. It arrives weekly, it stops when no child is living with you, and part of it is not really yours. Here is what a fostering income looks like in a real household: what the National Minimum Standards entitle you to ask for, how to plan for the gaps between children, how benefits and tax actually work, and the costs people forget.
A fostering panel reads your assessment, meets you and makes a recommendation, but it does not make the final decision. Here is who sits on the panel, what they are allowed to ask, what the terms of approval actually mean, how long the agency decision maker has, and what the Independent Review Mechanism can and cannot do if the answer is no.
Every foster carer in England is entitled to a named social worker, an induction, a training programme with a deadline, and an out-of-hours service. Here is what that actually looks like across your first year with South Coast, from Skills to Foster and the planning meeting to the phone call at eleven at night.
A conversation, at your pace
You don’t need to be ready to apply. A friendly conversation can help you work out your next step.
A first chat takes about 15–20 minutes. No pressure to apply. Lines open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
