Lucy Stevens - 16th March 2018
Becoming a foster carer. How do I decide who with?
Once you’ve decided to foster, the next decision is which agency to foster through. We advise that you do your research and see which fostering agencies operate in your local area. If you live in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk or Norfolk, you need to make sure that your Fostering provider is easy to get to and will be able to support you effectively.
Eastern Fostering Services have a head office in Suffolk and are therefore able to support foster carers in Essex, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk.
You need to get a good feel for the fostering agency. For example, how foster carer focussed are they? What do their foster carers say about them? Have they spent time talking to you about fostering and getting to know your needs and circumstances? What support do they offer? Did they mention training and developing your fostering career?
When you become a foster carer you will need good support from your fostering provider, therefore it is critical that you are convinced you will get this from your earliest conversations with them.
Request a home visit.
The first stage in applying to become a foster carer is to request a home visit.
At Eastern Fostering Services, we are really happy to do this so we will send two of our team to your house. You can ask all your fostering questions and get a feel for us as a team.
If, after this home visit, you want to go ahead and apply to be a foster carer, we will go through the application form with you.
The fostering application form
We use the application form to gather information about you and your partner if you have one. It allows us to understand a bit about your background and your motivation and timing to foster and, as a result, get a good sense of who you are.
There are no right or wrong answers!
Once the form is complete, we will ask you if you want to go ahead and foster. We will confirm that your fostering application has been accepted. There are very few reasons why an application form would not be accepted. Indeed early conversations with your fostering agency would reveal any problems or concerns from either side.
And now the fun starts.
We will allocate you an assessor who will be responsible for producing an assessment of you. This is called a form F and will be the subject of our next blog.
If you live in Essex, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire or Norfolk and would like to know more about becoming a foster carer, please call us on 01206 299775 or email us at team@easternfosteringservices.com
Eastern Fostering Services - The small agency with a strong family feel
Tags: applying to be a foster carer, becoming a foster carer, Cambridgeshire, Eastern Fostering Services, Essex, foster, fostering, fostering agency, fostering application, fostering service, Norfolk, Suffolk
