Skills to Foster Pre-approval Foster Carer Training
Participants will need to complete the Skills to Foster Pre-Approval Training course as this forms part of the assessment process. The training comprises of six sessions and runs over a Tuesday evening, a Saturday, a second Saturday and another Tuesday evening.
You will need to:
- Attend all sessions (1-6)
- Complete and return the Learning Diary
Sessions and topics covered:
Session one:
Understanding your role as a foster carer
Aims:
- Start to get to know each other and agree how we will work together
- Look at what Skills to Foster Pre-Approval training covers and how to get the most out of training
- Share our ideas on how children grow and develop
- Consider the idea of fostering tasks and plans for children
- Talk about Fostering Regulations, National Minimum Standards, and the Training, Support and Development Standards
- Look at the foster carer role
Session Two:
Making links between childhood experiences, development and behaviour
Aims:
- Think about the links between childhood experience, development and behaviour
- Consider the importance of attachment
- Explore issues of separation and loss in fostering children and young people
Session Three:
Managing behaviour and working as part of a team
Aims:
- Explore the need to develop strategies to help children and young people manage their behaviour
- Consider what the law says about how and when children come into foster care
- Discuss how foster carers, social workers and other professionals work together
- Explore what happens and who is involved when a child comes into foster care
- Acknowledge the feelings of everyone involved when a child comes into foster care
Session Four:
Diversity, identity and experience of being fostered
Aims:
- Explore some ideas about difference, discrimination and equality in fostering children
- Appreciate the need to act as an advocate on behalf of children and young people who may experience disadvantage as a result of unfair discrimination
- Look at what makes for a secure sense of identity and ways of nurturing the heritage and personal identity of children and young people
- Explore foster care from the point of view of a fostered young person
Session Five:
Safer Caring
Aims:
- Discuss the nature and consequences of abuse, how it affects children
- Think about how carers can respond to the needs of children who have been abused
- Consider what to do if a child talks about their abuse
- Consider risk and safer caring for families who foster
Session Six:
Maintaining links and moving on
Aims:
- Look at the specialist health services for fostered children
- Consider the importance of working in partnership with birth families of foster children and helping children to stay in touch
- Consider why and how placements come to an end
- Explore how carers can help children and young people move on in a positive way
- Acknowledge the feelings of everyone involved when a placement ends
Attendance on the above will give you, the applicant, an opportunity to explore and discuss the rewards and the challenges of fostering with other people who are applying to foster and hear from experienced foster carers, young people who are being fostered and fostering workers (supervising social workers). You will receive a copy of each of the PowerPoint session presentations following your attendance.
Once you have attended all sessions and returned the completed document requested (the Learning Diary), you will be issued with a certificate of attendance.
We hope you find them interesting and helpful.
The Learning Diary is a Microsoft Word document to enable you to complete your Learning diary electronically. When it is completed, please re-save it in a folder on your own computer add your surname and your post code to the document name and email to the Fostering Training Co-Ordinators FosteringTrainingCo-Ordinators@nottscc.gov.uk.
