Parent and child fostering

• Sometimes young parents need additional support to look after their young ones.
• They may not have the skills, understanding or a good role model to teach them the essential skills needed for childcare.
• Specialist foster carers take on parent and child placements to guide them, providing support, supervision and care.

Good parenting involves providing babies and children with safe and loving care. These are the skills that we often learn from our own childhoods and from our experiences of being provided with warmth, comfort, nourishment and safe boundaries. What happens if you have never experienced that? How do you then start to be able to provide it for your children?

This is where our parent and child carers can make a difference. They are foster parents who have the skills and experience to be good parents, but also have the ability, training and support to share those skills with vulnerable young parents. They provide intensive, time limited (usually about 16 weeks), live in assessments for parents whose children are most at risk of being taken into care.

Single parents (or couples) with their child (or children) are placed with parent and child foster carers in a safe and secure home. These families are some of the most vulnerable because they often will not have had positive parenting role models and will not be able to draw on their experience to provide a nurturing environment for their child.

During the stay in your home parents will be guided through a support programme designed to help them live together and care for their child in a safe and independent environment. For the right families this approach ensures the best outcomes for the parents and their children and the hope is that they will be able to move back to their home and care safely for their child.

Breaking the destructive cycle of poor parenting is never easy but if you have ever wanted to help a young family to stay together and thrive, being a parent and child foster carer could be an amazing opportunity.

We specialise in this work and have staff who are dedicated to helping parent and child foster carers provide the best care. We support and train you to ensure that you have everything you need to change lives and help families stay safe. Parent and child carers are highly regarded professionals who receive a very special financial package for doing this work. This package can include a retainer payment for periods when you may not have a placement.