Fostering, adopting and looked after children
The Family Placement Service is separated into three main areas; Fostering, Adoption and the Short Break Service. The overall aim of children's services is to ensure safe, secure and effective care that enables all children to fulfil their potential, maximise their health and live successful adult lives.
Children's placements exist to help realise this objective when it is in the interests of the child not to remain with their families or have breaks from their family home.
The Family Placement Service's objectives are:
- To provide the best possible placements for children and young people to enable them to reach their full potential.
- To support, train and supervise all carers so they can provide a wide range of placements, which meet the diverse needs of children and young people.
- To gate-keep resources within a financial framework that meets the needs of children, young people and their families.
National Resources:
Fostering Network
Department for Education and Skills
Fostering
Fostering means caring for children or young people who are not your own, sometimes for a few days, a few months and occasionally years.
Who can foster?
Anyone who can provide care and commitment to children or young people from a wide variety of cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds. As a parent or single person, with or without children who have the time and space in their lives and homes to look after children. You will be amazed just how qualified you are to become a first class foster carer.
Are there different forms of fostering?
Yes. You can foster:
- Short Term- For a few weeks or months
- Long Term - For years and sometimes until the child reaches 18 years
- Emergency - At short notice and any hour day or night
- Respite - To help families and other carers have a break
- Adolescent - To help care for older children and young people, who may be from countries abroad
Is there financial and other support?
All foster carers are provided with training and on going support from their Supervising Social Worker.
A generous allowance is given depending on the age and needs of the children or child being fostered.
![Fostering Flyer]()
A guide to becoming a foster carer
What are our aims?
- To provide the best possible foster placements for children and young people, to enable them to reach their full potential.
- To recruit, assess, train, review, advise and support foster carers.
What is fostering?
Fostering is caring for children or young people in your own home whilst their own parents are unable to look after them, this can be for a day, a week, months and sometimes years.
The London Borough of Havering have a responsibility to look after children or young people living in their area who are in need.
Whilst a child or young person is with a foster carer, their parents still have responsibility towards them and will expect to be involved.
Usually, children or young people return to their family but sometimes this is not possible and a decision will be made to find a permanent new family.
Children or young people who are looked after by Havering, will have a social worker who is responsible for planning, arranging contact with their families and working with the child, their parents and foster carer in the best interest of the child or young person.
Who needs fostering?
Foster carers are needed for a broad range of children and young people:
- Individual children or young people
- Sibling groups
- Children with behavioural problems
- Children with physical and learning disabilities
The children and young people come from diverse backgrounds, racial groups and religious backgrounds and their ages may range from babies to 1 8 years old.
Foster carers are especially required for siblings groups, older children and young people and those from minority ethnic groups, who are under represented in the borough at the present time. Also carers who can provide emergency placements, respite placements or remand foster placements.
Children and young people need to be fostered for a number of reasons. Usually there is some family crisis when parents are not in a position to care for them. Some may need time out from their family. Other children who have been neglected, physically, sexually or emotionally abused, or have been removed from their parents by the court, need to be cared for. Foster placements are also sought for children with disabilities whose family need a break.
Who can become a foster carer?
Anyone aged 21 and over can become a foster carer. Foster carers are as diverse as the children or young people they look after. You can be single, married, or have a long term relationship. You can have a high or low income. You can own your own home or you can rent.
The only specific barriers to applying are certain types of criminal records. A conviction will not necessarily stop you from being accepted but will mean your application will be given careful consideration.
What is important is that you have time and space in your lives and home for a child or young person who may be demanding. They need to be with people who can understand and be sensitive to the troubled backgrounds they may have.
You will need to show that you can care properly for children or young people and willing to undergo preparation and training for the job you will be doing.
How do I become a foster carer?
- Registering your interest and completing an application form.
- You will be visited in your own home by a social worker, who will discuss issues around fostering and the suitability of you home for accommodating children or young people.
- Subject to clearances of all the checks we make, you will be invited to attend the Fostering Preparation Group. These groups are run regularly and take up to 3 days spread over a number of weeks. Attendance by all potential foster carers is obligatory.
- Following successful completion of the Fostering Preparation Training, the Home Study (Form F) Assessment will commence. The Form F is a nationally recognised format for the assessment of foster carers and will explore your experiences and skills in caring for children or young people, your support systems, your families views and your preferred options on the number, age, gender and type of fostering you would like to do. Referees, not family members, need to be interviewed and you will be asked to have a medical with your GP.
- When the assessment is completed it will be shared with you before being presented to the Carers Panel for approval.
- Potential foster carers are always invited to attend the Panel. If you choose to do so, you will be supported by your supervising social worker.
- Confirmation of your approval will be sent within 14 working days of the Panel meeting.
Will carers be paid?
Foster carers are paid allowances, which covers the costs of caring for a child or young person in your home, according to their age.
The department will also loan equipment as appropriate, according to the needs of your approval category.
Will carers be supported?
Once approved a Supervising Social Worker will make sure that you have all the necessary support, information and training you require. Support Groups for Foster Carers are held monthly and the London Borough of Havering has it's own Foster Carers Association which is run by foster carers who offer support and arrange social events.
There will be an opportunity to obtain your NVQ Level 3 in Child Care once you are an established foster carer.
Private Fostering
Usually a birth parent chooses and arranges private foster placements, which could take many forms. These include children coming from abroad to access the education and health systems, children living with a friend's family after separation, divorce or arguments at home, teenagers living with the family of a boy/girl friend, or people who came to this country to study or work, but anti-social hours make it difficult for them to care for their own children.
Private foster carers' responsibilities
- Advise your local council in which you live of your intention to foster a child at least 6 weeks in advance or where an emergency placement is made, within 48 hours of the child's arrival.
- Notify your local council when a child leaves your care stating why and giving the name and address of the person into whose care the child has moved.
Birth parents' responsibilities
- Retain parental responsibility, initiating and participating in all the decisions.
- Provide the prospective carer with as much information about the child as possible, including health records, dietary needs, school records, hobbies, religion and ethnicity.
- If the prospective carer has not already done so, advise the local council of the private fostering arrangement.
Local council responsibilities
- Check on the suitability of private foster carers.
- Ensure that advice is made available when needed.
- Visit the home to ensure children are well cared for in a safe and suitable environment.
- A child can be removed from a private foster placement if there is reasonable cause to suspect that the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm.
- Although the primary responsibility for safeguarding the welfare of the child rests with the parent, the regulations are intended to help protect vulnerable children who are likely to be cared for longer-term in households other than their own.
What to do next
If you intend to privately foster or are currently a private foster carer, please contact us for advice on how to register.
Useful contact numbers - fostering
Contact Number
Fostering Network
87 Blackfriars road, London SE1 8HA
Tel: 020 7620 64000
British Association for Adoption and Fostering
Tel: 020 7421 2600
Department of Health
Web: www.doh.gov.uk/adoption