hopefully just starting the forstering process....

[meeeemo]

Dh and i have decided that we would like to be foster careers. I have had a telephone interview with a social worker. she raised a few points regarding us not having lived in the area long, and not really having any friends or family nearby.
We live quite rurally ( but we are buying a house in new year in a village) , so whilst we do have people that we talk to we really only have 1 true friend here. we see family regularly and my best friend also visits often, so we do not feel as though we are lacking a support system, but i felt it was a concern for her.

What is involved next? what sort of questions can we expect?

I know they will interview us at home, but do they monitor us? as in watch us in our home environment? - we do not have any children.

We have 4 spare bedrooms, so we are open to having sibling groups.

we also have 2 dogs and a cat, do they do any temperament tests on dogs? - not that it is a concern i just wondered how they tested that dogs were ok with children?

I have looked through at other threads and as yet i have not worked out the abbreviations!

I would imagine they would want you to gain some experience dealing with kids of a similar age to the ones you are hoping to foster....so maybe join a sports club or social club like Scouts or Guides or you local church if you are of that mind.

This will give you experience AND friendships in the local community.

They will interview you and the interview can be quite intrusive about your own childhoods and your own life experiences. They will want to interview friends, family about you and your motivation. They may want to speak to previous partners.

Temperament of dogs: What sort of dog do you have? We have a golden retriever, so it was all rubber stamped because they are well known as big soft gentle family dogs. If you have a dog with a bad reputation - like a staffie or a rottweiler, you may find they will have a temperament assessment.

we are not really into sports, or going to social clubs etc. and we are not religious.

to be honest, even back where we have moved from (where i was born) we were not falling over friends. again we had people that we talk to, but wouldnt consider friends. We tend just to have a couple of close friends.

we have lab/springers. they love kids and are very gentle and sweetly tempered. the only down side is they are slightly nervous of new adults, especially men.

• god i have just read that back and we sound right grumps!!

we really are not!

meemo, do you have any experience with kids?

I can tell you that I have 3 of my own. One of whom had severe emotional problems when younger. we are/were scout leaders, heavily involved with school, etc.

NONE of this prepared us for fosterlings. The 2 FC we have are incredibly disturbed by their past life. 90% of the time they are fine. 10% of the time they are bloody hard work. Not their fault at all, but try dealing with children who are extremely anxious, agressive and violent when everything you know about behaviour management will not work with them.

It is a huge undertaking to bring one child into your life. Two is more that twice the work, because you have that individual child's needs plus the relationship between them which is often completely maladjusted.

You need to get experience working with kids. Spend some time with stroppy teens or tantrumming toddlers and see if you can coe with a couple of hours. Because this will be your life 24/7. Its not easy, and without a good friend network within your local community, you will not cope - especially without any previous child care experience. It takes a community to raise a child.

yes I do have experience with all ranges of ages as well as my partner has a grown up daughter. and we have neices and newphews.
we are going into this with our eyes open. we are quite confident that we will cope.

we do understand what a huge upheaval this will be.

we are only just starting the process, so only time will tell!

Support worker will meet with you both and also each of you separately several times over a period of time. It normally happens in your house.

Questions can be and quite often are a little intrusive, they ask about you and your partner, how you both work, they observe you both react with each other but not as watching you for half a day, just during your meetings with SW (support worker), i.e. if you listen to each other, let the other person speak and give own opinions, how you support each other and care for each other, simple things like this, e.g. even tone of voice. It's nothing to worry about, just be yourselves, if you decided to take on fostering, you both must be sure of strength of your relationship, so all will be good :)
Also SW will ask about your families, how do you remember your childhood, how you were disciplines, good and bad moments, relationships with parents and siblings, and bigger family circle.
They will want to know about your personalities, how far you can stretch yourselves and what are your pet peeves, to be honest you can learn a lot about each other and yourselves during the whole assessment period.
Also your previous relationships: what were they like, why they ended, etc.
You will be asked to fill in a form about you: addresses, jobs, schools, important events in your lives - all this to get to know you and understand you better.
The SW will ask why you want to foster and do you want to / what would happen if you became pregnant (if this can be the case).

You will be asked to give friends/family/work/ex-partner details for references and the SW will send forms to them and call them/meet them to discuss in more detail.

You will need to be DBA check - it's an enhanced DBA check, which takes normally about 4-6 weeks, our took 7 weeks to come back.

Also you will need to see GP and have a doctors report done.

There is a skills to fostering course to attend which in our agency took 3 days (Sat&Sun one week and Sat the following week).

All costs are covered by the agency (DBA checks, GP reports).

AND then there's the Panel meeting at the very end, which is where my partner and I are at the moment (coming Wednesday 18th). Very exciting and keep everything crossed ;)

I don't know all the abbreviations myself, but what are the ones you don't know?

thank you joanna, that was really helpful.

we do have a very strong, very honest relationship.

I will show him what you have written so he can get an idea also.

when do you find out if you have passsed? good luck!

Most LA's now aim for 6 months but i dont think that target is hit, i met a foster carer this week who said it took 17 months to be approved. Our panel date is in March and that will be 7 months for us.

You're welcome meeeemo, I'm glad I could help :)
Thanks for the good luck wishes, my partner and I attended the panel meeting today and we got accepted, very excited and a little nervous! ;) Now just waiting for the official decision of the agency's decision maker.

We are with a private fostering agency, it has taken us 5,5 months. 17 months is an incredibly long time from what our SSW told us, however this can be due to various things on both LA's and FC side I guess, sometimes you need more time to consider things in more detail or simply sort a few things in your life and prepare.

are you able to tell me the differences and pros and cons of the different routes to go down? we have gone through the council, but purely because we had no idea of any other means.

well done!! fingers crossed x

The general idea is that agencies pay a lot more but you have longer between placements and older children or more complicated children/sibling groups and LA's pay much less but have more frequent placements and younger children.

Though it varies from agency to LA

My LA are not using IfAs at all at the moment - they are leaving children at home rather than do this (although of course we have only been told this "off the record") and whenever possible children with agency carers have been brought back in house as soon as possible. I know several agency carers who haven't had a placement for over 9 months. If you will be relying on the money from fostering to pay the bills then this is definitely something you need to factor in.

I'm aware this isn't the same all over the country though - my own LA has huge financial problems and failed to meet the savings imposed last year, hence even more drastic measures this year. If you're interested in going with an IfA I'd approach your local ones asking what their placement times are.

right, thank you for that. We are going going though LA currently. We are open to children of all ages as well as siblings. We have 4 spare bedrooms, so ideal for siblings.

will keep what you have said in mind. thank you

meeeemo, I think that if you are open to teenagers and sibling groups, then I imagine you wouldn't have to wait for too long between placements, depending on what you're accepted for. The area where you live can make a big difference too. As far as I know (we asked), within our IFA the longest wait so far has been around 7 months - a person who lives fairly remotely and has 2 big dogs (not labs), also has been away on holiday 2 times during this period.
Apparently within our area, our IFA is the first place the LA goes to with placements. Hopefully this means we'll be lucky to have kids most of the time.
We don't have much experience with children, and therefore it was really important for us to be well matched and to have plenty of support. Someone recommended our IFA and we ended up with them.

sorry, what is the ifa?

I believe it stands for Independent Fostering Agency, it just means a private fostering agency, not a local authority

ah thank you!

You're welcome :) Good luck!

i wonder if anyone has any advise . Following on from our phone conversation with the social worker we have not heard anything more from them. I spoke to the woman who originally passed our details on the social worker, she is Administrative Assistant for Social Work and Psychology Services according to her email. I asked her when i could expect to heard from them, but she has said once she passed my details on she no longer has contact with them.

I realise that Christmas can cause everything to stop and it takes a while to start it up again. Does anyone know where i could get an email address to contact social workers ourselves? i do not have a name for the lady i spoke to though!

Almost all the social workers in my LA have been on holiday for the past 2 weeks and go back tomorrow. But i am sure if you google fostering in your LA it will have a page for contacting, just get hold of anyone in any office and they should be able to pass you through to the right place x

Your local council website should have a number to ring. You might have to be transferred. When I used to ring up I used to just say 'can I speak to someone about my application to foster please?'

It is worth keeping in contact with them throughout the different steps. In late July after we'd had an initial visit I got sent a form to say if we were still interested in proceeding. I sent it in the next day but then didn't hear anything. I waited until after the summer holidays, as I knew a few people would be off work, and rang in the second week of September. I was told the person I would need to speak to would call me back. She didn't, so 2 days later I rang again. This time I was told she was off for 2 weeks. When I rang 2 weeks later I was told that actually it was someone else who was dealing with it and she had left but someone would ring me back. They did, to say they couldn't find the form I'd sent in, but someone else would contact me. A couple of days later I looked through my calls on my mobile until I found the number of the person who visited us as she'd rang us on that day, and sent her a text to say sorry to bother her but I wasn't having any luck getting through to anyone. She called me back and finally things started moving.

So I recommend that you do, politely, keep in touch so things move forward. I imagine they are very busy and it's easy for applications to slip through the net a bit.

I don't think you would need a contact name necessarily, as they should be able to take your name and find your details from that.