At Eastern Fostering Services, we recognise that one of the most important functions of all fostering communities is to offer support to foster carers and the children and young people they care for.

So, today we want to look at take a look at the Eastern Fostering Services team and the role it plays as a vital Fostering Community.

Who is the Eastern Fostering Services team?

The team at Eastern Fostering Services is small but perfectly formed. In every area of the agency, we have been able to attract people who are passionate about children and the opportunities fostering can give them when done well.

Supervising social worker community

We have a team of Supervising Social Workers supporting carers across Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. Their role is to support and advocate for our carers and the children they care for. They offer carers regular supervision in which carers are able to share the successes of the children, seek advice, share any concerns, ask for help to communicate with other professionals or identify additional areas for training and development. One of the social work team is always available outside of office hours, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Our team of social workers pride themselves on the relationships they build with carers, which allow honesty, transparency and an ability to secure the best possible outcomes for children.

The social workers accompany carers to all professionals’ meetings and support carers in their communications with other professionals to ensure the voice of the child is heard.

Children and young people’s participation community

Our participation team works directly with the children and young people to build relationships with them and to ensure that we always hear their voices. They hold a regular forum for young people called Choices for Young Voices which enables the young people to discuss issues that affect them and how they would like Eastern Fostering Services to advocate for them. The team also works with birth children who have their own forum My Best Fostering Family so that they have a space to build further relationships and ensure they get the support they need. Both groups of young people have regular opportunities to mix together at Eastern Fostering Services events and many of them have formed really close bonds!

Administration Community

We have a team of very hard-working administrators who ensure that the significant amount of paperwork required of fostering providers is all in order. There are strict regulations which all fostering providers must comply with, and it is important that records are kept complete and up to date.

The team also make sure that we communicate well with our carers and children so that they know what training, events or fun days are organised and when. The admin team is a key part of the fostering agency, supporting carers to manage the paperwork that is associated with fostering. We’re happy to be able to thank them and celebrate them this Foster Care Fortnight.

Accounts community

All foster carers receive a weekly allowance for fostering so that they can support the practical, material and emotional needs of the children they care for. Making sure that all carers receive the correct allowance and expenses on time is no mean feat. Yet our team does it seemingly effortlessly.

As a fostering agency, Eastern Fostering Services feel strongly that we should plough finances back into the children. We do this by providing therapeutic services, direct workers, days out, social events and focus groups. Our accounts team helps us to recognise where we need to put resources and when. None of this would be possible without our financial whizz kids!

Assessment Community

When we accept your application to foster with us, we assign you your own assessor. We use a number of current or former social workers so that we can choose the one we feel best suited to work with you as an individual to produce your Form F.

Assessors need to be warm, sensitive, thorough, tenacious, analytical, strong communicators, diligent and organised. They need to have a lot of expert knowledge around fostering and its requirements. The assessment needs to be thorough so that panel have all the information they need and yet it also needs to be managed as sensitively as possible with potential carers to create an open, trusting space. Not an easy balance! Yet our team does this with great skill.

Placements Community

The placing of children with foster carers is a vital part of the fostering process. We take matching extremely seriously at Eastern Fostering Services. Whilst in many ways you don’t truly know if fostering is going to work for you until you start living it, we can give it the best chance of success. We do this by getting to know you, your circumstances, your strengths and your motivations. When we then receive requests for foster carers for specific children and young people, we have a good idea of whether they are a potential match. We will always ask for your input, check what questions or concerns you have and try and get as much information about the children as is possible. Foster carers always have the right to say no to a child they don’t feel is a match and this in itself helps us to refine our matching.

Recruitment Community

We always need more foster carers! Attracting new carers is something every member of the Eastern Fostering Services community takes responsibility for, including our carers!

“We think you are an exceptional agency and always feel like part of a welcoming family.”

You can find out more about the Eastern Fostering Services Community here.

If you’re thinking about fostering, please get in touch with us. You can email us at team@easternfosteringservices.com or call us on 01206 299775 or you can message us on Facebook.

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“It was the first time, I fully appreciated just how many professionals are involved with the children and how important it must be to invest in these relationships,” said one of our recently approved carers.

This was an astutely made point. It is indeed important to build good relationships within the professional community, to understand their roles, their objectives and how best to work with them to promote the well being of the children you are fostering.

It’s also no bad thing to realise that this can be overwhelming as a foster carer and to remember how it must sometimes feel for children who live with a high degree of scrutiny.

Which professionals make up the fostering community?

The number of professionals surrounding a child in foster care will vary according to the circumstances, history and current needs of the child. In addition to the foster carer, every child will have a Local Authority Social Worker or a personal adviser if over the age of 18.

Local Authority Social Worker

Every child under 18 will have a local authority social worker. The fullness of their role depends on the status of the child. The Local Authority may have full parental responsibility for the child, for instance. All local authority social workers have the responsibility of implementing, following, supporting or advocating for the care plan for the child. As such, it is important that carers can feed into this process by regular, open communication and the establishment of a good working relationship. The social worker will have a legal obligation to see the child regularly; the exact timeframe will vary according to the individual needs and circumstances of the child but it will be specific. The social worker will ultimately be responsible for all areas of the care plan: education, health, emotional well-being etc. It is ultimately the foster carer who is involved most heavily day-to-day in all of these areas. An important part of the foster carer’s role is to feed their observations back to the social worker and advocate for the child. This is why a good working relationship is so important; it allows the voice of the child to be heard and responded to.

Health professionals

Children in foster care will have regular statutory health checks. These are usually carried out by a dedicated nurse. They are responsible for tracking the physical health of the child, but they may also identify any issues relating to mental health. Foster carers will be able to raise any concerns with the nurse and the nurse will be able to make recommendations if further input is needed. Foster carers also build relationships with GPs, dentists, opticians as children require regular appointments with these professionals also!

Education professionals

Education is a vital part of childhood and for children in foster care, there is a significant onus placed on it. There are regular meetings devoted to the education plans for a child. These meetings review progress, identify needs and set out changes to the current education plan. The education community will include foster carers, Local Authority Social Workers, supervising social workers (social workers dedicated to foster carers and their families), teachers, virtual schools, SEN professionals, pastoral professionals, careers advisors and anyone else who plays a role in the delivery of education for that specific child. Each review meeting will look at previous objectives and action points and will determine new objectives and areas for further support. Foster carers work closely with the children and with schools to support their educational needs, so it is often carers who have the most rounded view of how children are doing, what they are excelling at and what they need further support in. The quality of the relationships within this community are crucial in determining the educational outcomes for children in foster care. These relationships need to be pursued and nurtured by foster carers and foster carers should be able to play a major role in the advocacy of children and young people where their education is concerned.

Mental health professionals

Many children in foster care will have experienced loss and trauma. As such it is very common for children and young people to display signs of poor mental health. Foster carers need to support children in many ways from helping them to recognise and accept their feelings to reporting areas for concern that may be affecting carers’ ability to keep children safe and healthy. Carers may need to work with Mental Health agencies such as CAMHS or they may advocate for the child to have access to therapists or other professionals. Many carers at Eastern Fostering Services work closely with our therapist to understand how to therapeutically parent, to exchange ideas and techniques for managing mental health or to talk through their own struggles in managing some of the more difficult aspects of caring for a child or young person with mental health conditions.

Advocates or direct workers

Many Local Authorities offer an advocacy service for young people. These professionals will build a relationship with young people, understand their individual needs and desires and effectively be their voice with other professionals. They will visit regularly and usually take the young person out so that they can spend quality time together. Advocates are often very significant in the lives of young people in foster care; their impartiality and desire to represent the voice of the child faithfully means that they can really inspire openness and trust.

Similarly, direct workers, like Paul at Eastern Fostering Services play an important role in offering an additional person for children to spend time with and share any concerns. These professionals will have a varied remit from taking children out for treats, talking through problems, supervising contact, transporting to appointments and organising days out for the children in the fostering community.

Fostering provider Supervising Social Workers

These professionals are social workers employed by a fostering provider to support foster carers and their families. In reality, and certainly at Eastern Fostering Services, the role is much more in-depth. Often, they are the glue that holds all the relationships together as they communicate with all professionals to advocate for the carers and children they foster. They also play a major role in supporting the children and young people, regularly spending time with them and talking to them about anything that they may want to get off their chests. They will be present at all professionals’ meetings and will be able to represent the voice of the carers and children should they need to be reinforced. Supervising social workers contribute significantly to the longevity of fostering placements through the support and advocacy they offer. They meet regularly with carers and liaise with other professionals to ensure that the best interests of the children and young people are met.

Independent Reviewing Officers (IRO)

The role of the IRO is to scrutinise the care plans for the children and young people in foster care and to ensure they are being delivered faithfully. They will often host and lead review meetings and will ensure that all professionals are doing what is expected of them in order to deliver best practise for the children and young people concerned. They can require and ask for further action, input or change to make sure that the best outcomes are achieved. As the name suggests, they should be independent of the Local Authority and have as their focus the well-being of the child. Foster carers can escalate any concerns or issues to the IRO if they feel they are having an adverse effect on the child.

There may well be other professionals involved with delivering holistic care to children and young people. This community is varied and full of expert knowledge and skill. The relationships formed within the professional fostering community have a direct impact on the outcomes for children. As always, the foster carer is pivotal. It is no mean feat to manage and nurture these relationships to get the best out of them. Yet foster carers do this day by day in order to promote the needs and wishes of the children they foster.

We’d like to acknowledge and thank all the professionals who work so hard to ensure that a holistic package of care is provided to the children we foster, and we’d like to particularly thank our foster carers for getting the very best out of them!

If you would like to know more about fostering, you can contact us via our website, via Facebook, by email at team@easternfosteringservices.com or by phoning 01206 299775.

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Today, I am reflecting on one of those life events that makes being a Social Worker for nearly 30 years worthwhile. I claim no credit for the achievements of this incredibly special woman, I am just grateful for being part of her journey.

I first met ‘Belle” (she is a Disney fan, so we agreed on this as her pseudonym) in the 1990’s as her fostering Social Worker. She was a feisty, mixed-up teen, rightly angry with the world but also clearly possessing a strong and positive spirit. We immediately struck up a great rapport that has now stood the test of time, having just been to her wedding in 2022.

As I write this, I can feel the goosebumps rising on my arms, because to see her walk down the aisle, looking like a Disney Princess, beaming with a sense of peace about her was a moment I find hard to describe-my heart swelled, and I shed a tear-particularly when I saw the look on the face of her husband to be-filled with love, telling her how fabulous she looked.

Then

Belle had a rough start to life, she was part of a family of four and they were all separated as children-her younger brother being adopted on his own, her older brother remaining in foster care because he was seen as ‘too old’ to adopt, and Belle and her sister going to live with an adoptive family together. For Belle, the adoption didn’t work out-the adoptive family rejected her and kept her sister-causing a fracture in their sibling relationship that lasted many years. Belle went to a fostering family who specialised in looking after teenage girls and she found a place where she felt accepted. Feeling part of this family gave her some space to express some of the anger and hurt, and on top of the usual challenges of growing up, she was trying to come to terms with her past-this led to such a mixture of emotions for her, but her fostering family and I could always see what was underneath and I’m glad we were able to help hold her while she raged at the world.

Belle did well at school but the transition between childhood and adulthood was hard, and as she moved into independent living; Belle bounced around a lot in different accommodation. She always had a great sense of justice and I remember her losing her place in the YMCA for hitting someone who was a bully. Nowadays she still has that sense of defending the vulnerable, but she does it with well-chosen words!

The journey

Despite her inner struggles, she connected well with her community and was a regular on the local karaoke scene, often winning competitions as she is such a talented singer. She also performed in local pantomimes, something she still does, making connections wherever she goes.

Whilst academically gifted, Belle found it hard to focus on a career choice; she was too busy just learning how to make her way in life day to day. The legacy of such an unsettled early life can continue to be felt at many milestones in adulthood. This was also affected by her becoming pregnant with her daughter, a much-loved surprise.

Belle adapted to life as a single parent brilliantly, loving her daughter fiercely, being determined to give her everything she hadn’t had, and her daughter has now grown from the ‘bald boxer’ I affectionately and not very politely, used to describe her as, to being a beautiful reflection of her mother, an absolute credit to Belle.

Belle made the decision to move to the north of England, to work with children in care, having always been clear that she wanted to ‘give something back’, an attitude that I thoroughly applaud, and respect. She had very little herself, yet she was still looking at how she could help others. This also gave her the opportunity to re-build her relationship with her sister and today they are incredibly close, demonstrating that although experiences in childhood can carry with us through adult life, they don’t have to define it.

I remember going to Belle’s goodbye party before she moved away, and as I arrived, she shouted ‘my Social Worker is here!’ I can’t say that made me the most popular party guest, but it did give me the opportunity to show her friends on her estate that I wasn’t too scary!

Now

Belle is now working in a school, carrying on the tradition of helping others, she attends her local church, she performs in panto, and she has just married a man who clearly thinks the world of her. She has a family with her daughter and his girls. She is still feisty; she still expresses her opinions with feeling and clarity, and she is still a uniquely lovely person who I am proud to know, and care for deeply. At her wedding were all four siblings, together for the first time in many years.

But the last word has to go to Belle:

“You missed the part where YOU used to go above and beyond what was expected of you to make sure I always got what I needed, even when I didn’t know I needed it. 

And the part where I chose to name my daughter after one of the fiercest warriors in social worker history in the hope that she becomes just as fierce and composed and loyal.” 

This is what makes being part of the Fostering Social Worker community so worthwhile.

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Sandra

Sandra is one of our senior supervising social workers. She has many years’ experience supporting carers and children and she is a fierce advocate of both.

“I have been part of the Eastern Fostering Services community for nearly 7 years, as a supervising social worker. I grew up in a fostering family from the age of 6 months and my parents were LA foster carers. Fostering was very different then with no Independent Fostering Agencies and very little support for carers. Eastern Fostering Services offers amazing support and I’m sure anyone who fosters for us feels part of a close knit, supportive family…….I certainly do.”

Rachel

Rachel is an important part of the Eastern Fostering Team. She works in the administration team and is responsible, amongst other things, for all the carer annual reviews. A mammoth task!

“This is what I enjoy and value most about being part of a Fostering community

Finding the right family to match the children’s needs

Overcoming obstacles

Seeing the difference it makes to children’s lives

Teamwork – all helping each other, working towards the same goal

Enjoying seeing the children being happy

Realising the difference one person can make

Identifying ways we can help

Noticing the small changes

Giving every child a safe, stable and loving home”

Sam

Sam is one of our Supervising Social Workers. She supports many of our Essex foster carers and children and does a brilliant job.

“Because we are a small team and because of the ethos we subscribe to, the whole team is encouraged to think about the children in everything we do. We are not only encouraged but expected to bring feedback, thoughts and ideas to the group. How can we improve things for carers and children? How can we be more child focussed and think outside of the box when it comes to solutions for the obstacles carers and children may face? It’s in this way that I think Eastern Fostering Services is part of a community that really adds value to the children and the carers that we look after.”

Sarah

Sarah is often referred to as the lynchpin of Eastern Fostering Services. She oversees all the adminstration associated with fostering and generally keeps the whole team functioning.

“I have been part of a fostering community for over 10 years and love it!  It is wonderful to see new families embark on their fostering journey and also to admire the dedication of our experienced foster carers. It is a privilege to see the children in our care given the opportunity to thrive and be happy. I feel grateful that I am able to be a part of our fostering community.”

Yvette 

Yvette is another key part of the admin team, helping keep us all in good working order!

“I love being part of a team that makes a difference to children’s lives. Although I am part of the admin team (and therefore do not have direct contact with the children) I feel as though I am doing something worthwhile.”

Paul

Paul is our children and young people’s participation worker. He does some really valuable work building relationships with the children and young people, supporting them and offering both carers and children some space and time with someone who listens to them and advocates for them. Recently, Paul took one of our children to watch her favourite football team play. What he says demonstrates perfectly why our fostering community is so important:

“I took B to the football match yesterday and to say she was overjoyed was an understatement! She is naturally shy but over the last few months has blossomed and really come out of her shell.

She did ask me to thank Eastern Fostering Services for making this happen. She may not say in-person but she was so grateful and overwhelmed that she could visit her favourite team (and they won convincingly!)

This is what the Eastern Fostering Services community is all about!

But the last word has to go to one of our young people who perhaps puts it best. When asked why she likes being part of our fostering community and why it is important, she replied,

“Because it’s a vibe!”

It definitely is.

If you’d like to be a part of “the vibe” you can contact us at team@easternfosteringservices.com, call us on 01206 299775, contact us through our website or message us on Facebook.

The post What do Fostering Communities mean to us at Eastern Fostering Services? appeared first on Eastern Fostering Services.

What is a fostering community?

A fostering community is any group of people or organisations that provide a wider network of support or encouragement to both foster carers and the children and young people they care for. We would argue that fostering communities can also be spontaneous, occurring during opportunities for carers and children to socialise and have fun.

Why are fostering communities important?

Fostering communities, in all their various guises are a crucial part of fostering. They offer foster carers and children invaluable support and encouragement. They are vital in ensuring that fostering relationships are maintained, that carers feel heard and supported and in helping children and young people to thrive. When it comes to fostering, nothing is done in isolation. As the adage goes, it takes a community to raise a child. This is certainly true for fostering. Whilst the main onus is on the foster carers, there are a whole number of people and professionals that can make a profound difference in the lives of the children and young people we care for. It is these people, organisations and opportunities that we wish to celebrate this Foster Care Fortnight.

Foster Care Fortnight and Fostering Communities!

Keep an eye out for us on Facebook and Instagram this May as we shine a light on fostering communities and express our gratitude for them. We’ll be giving you:

• Insight into the Eastern Fostering Services Fostering Community
• An understanding of the support that Eastern Fostering Services offers carers and the difference this can make in transforming lives
• Thoughts from our foster carers on what Fostering Communities mean to them
• Contributions from our children on what they love about being part of our fostering community
• A glimpse of the events that allow communities to form and expand
• A look at the Eastern Fostering Services team and what fostering, and community means to us
• A guide to the professional community that play such an important role in advocating for children and young people

As ever, if you are inspired to start your fostering journey this Foster Care Fortnight, please get in touch via our website, by email at team@easternfosteringservices.com or give us a call on 01206 299775.

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