Explaining foster care to family

If you are thinking of becoming a foster carer, you may be wondering how to go about explaining foster care to family and friends. To start, it might be helpful if you have an outline of the roles and responsibilities that foster parents undertake to help you describe what you would like to do. In reality of course it is very difficult to find a job description that truly covers the whole range of things that foster carers do, but that should not stop us from trying. Explaining foster care to family and friends is an important and necessary task.

Good foster parenting always begins with providing a safe and caring home environment for a vulnerable child, one which can improve their lives and make a real difference to their futures. However, most people who are thinking of fostering for the first time may not realise that in order to provide this sort of stability there are a range of skills you need to develop, and rules and guidelines you should follow, but please don’t panic because it will be Family Fostering Partner’s job to explain these to you and help you to meet the requirements. In turn, the responsibility of explaining foster care to family and friends will be yours.

Our Attempt at explaining foster care to family.

We would describe how foster carers take children into their homes at a time when they most need love, acceptance, and support. As a foster parent you are part of a wide team of professionals who work with children and young people that cannot live at home with their birth parents. You become a professional parent and a key member of that team, working with others to keep a child safe and secure.

The local authority often turns to fostering services such as Family Fostering Partners when they need foster care for a child, and this is where the job description becomes more specific, because different children need different types of foster care. Some children need a respite or emergency placement during a crisis, whilst others need a short-term placement to allow plans for their future to be agreed. Other children need long-term homes where they can spend the remainder of their childhood and grow and develop into confident adults. Explaining foster care to family with the  idiosyncrasies of short-term care, long term care etc can feel overwhelming. We invite your family and friends to take a look at our website, or to speak to a member of our team using the ‘live chat’.

Fostering with Family Fostering Partners

During your journey to become a foster carer for Family Fostering Partners you will have your own social worker from the agency who will help you to understand the specific responsibilities you will have as a foster carer, but they will also make sure you acquire the skills you will need to do your job well. You may be surprised how many of these skills you have already gained in your own parenting, in your work setting, or through your personal experiences. It may also surprise you to know that some people fostering for the first time may already have the skills and experience to offer specialist care, for example placements for Parent and Child.

Family Fostering Partners will help you recognise your existing skills but will also discuss any areas where we can offer you further training and support to learn and improve.

To ensure that foster carers provide the best possible care for all children, they should always be supported by their fostering service and their family and friends; explaining foster care to family and friends, and having their support, is so important. Click here to hear from one of our foster parents on their experience of fostering with Family Fostering Partners.

If you are interested in knowing more about what it means to be a foster carer, contact us today by phoning 0330 0948816, emailing info@familyfosteringpartners.co.uk, use the live chat feature on our website, or visit our Contact Us page.