what to expect at first home visit

[tasha22]

fostering agency phoned asked a lot of questions and said they are going to arrange a home visit. im excited/nervous. what happens at the home visit?

I think for us it was a general chat about why we were considering fostering, our hopes surrounding it and a little of our background, particularly around kids.

My advice is to be open and honest and just be yourself - if you pretend to be something you're not, then things might not work out anyway.

Hope all goes well

Bop

The purpose of the initial visit is to find out about your circumstances, get a feel of your home set up, ie space etc and for the agency to tell you about the approval process and what is expected of you and what you can expect of them. I second what mummybop said, it is best to be yourself and relax as much as possible. They are not there to check the quality of your dusting!

thank you. feeling more relaxed and more excited now. it doesnt sound very formal just a general chat about fostering? havent heard from them yet. should i let my kids stay for it or get them minded so i can talk to them better? they wont understand whats happening anyways. thanks

I would say if it makes you more relaxed, get someone to look after them for you, or better still is there someone who could look after them in your home so that they are visible but not in the same room as you if you know what I mean!

Later on in the process the agency will be interested to see you with your children but it isn't neccesary this early on.

We had six home visit from our agency in total. All those times dss age 4 and 3 were present. They were watching tv or using computer and we did let them.

hi, had the visit yesterday and it went really well. the lady that came out was lovely, i gained a lot more information and the kids were angels so another question. how long does it take to hear back?

I'm assuming this is before you have done your fostering course, so it could be a while before they schedule one. We had a visit last summer, there was a course scheduled in October we couldn't make, and we did our course finally this June.

shes give us dates for the course in september and if we cant make that one, (we should be able to though) then theres another one in november which is good. a bit worried about the medical though as i have a history of 'psychiatric illness' which i told the lady that was out yesterday. can this be a problem? thanks for answering my questions