Thinking of fostering

[Ragnar88]

Hi there first time poster here any advice and information would be greatly appreciated

My wife and I have been TTC for nearly 4 years now with no luck.

We have been considering fostering for some time now.

I work full time and my wife would like to be at home full time if we did successfully become foster caters.

I'm hoping someone with experience could give us a bit of advice and information around the process and what to expect from when we first make contact to start the process through to hopefully being accepted and becoming foster caters.

Also any information on any differences there are between fostering with LA and Private agencies.

As I mentioned my wife would be at home full time, and we wanted to know if the allowance payments would cover her in terms of not working a regular job(even equivalent to a minimum wage job is fine for us, we don't expect or want to make lots of money from doing this but we want to know we can afford my wife not working).

We are in South Wales so also any information on who we are best applying through would be much appreciated.

Many thanks for reading

@Eyeball11

Hello,
I don't know much about agencies, as I foster for a local authority. Our LA is very transparent about allowances etc. You could find the exact allowances you would get on their website so could do the sums about your budget before making any enquiries.
I gave up a job as a TA in a Primary school to foster (DH works full time)
Remember fostering allowances are per child. So when I fostered one child the allowance was rather less than I previously earned (by about £150 a month)But I now foster a sibling pair and the allowances received come to several hundred pounds a month more than I previously earned.
The allowances of course are to pay for the costs of looking after the children, so not earnings as such.
Good luck!

I’m with an agency, we get around £350 per week.
It’s sounds a lot but you need to pay for everything out of that.
Pocket money, savings, clothes, food,Petrol to and from contact, clubs etc.
So it quickly goes.

Thanks for replying to be honest that is more than what we had thought. How long did the process take for you from initially applying?

my sister is a "relief" foster parent to (a now) teenage foster child. She has her one weekend a month. She is at permanent foster parents otherwise. This child has really enriched our lives and is in her own words "a step-foster cousin" to our DD.

Can I ask why you are not considering adoption. You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to. It’s just that fostering is so erratic, you could have a child for a night or 10 years, with everything in between. Is it short term, long term or permancey you would be wanting to do. My family have been fostering for 11 years, we still have the 2 we first got who are now adults living with us. We have also fostered babies and young children short term 😳 last one was here from birth til 3years and 2 months.
We were fast tracked through our assessment and it took 6 months whereas my sister went through her assessment at a normal pace and took over 18 months.
Good luck with whatever you decide

It took us about 6 months from first contact to passing at panel.
Our first child came about 3 weeks later.