Become A Foster Carer
Fostering across the whole of England.
Call 07920 097 834 or email [email protected]
About fifteen minutes, and it tells us the sort of children you could care for.
Around 48 hours in all: 17 hours of training, 26 hours on your own application, and five check-ins with the assessment manager. At three hours a week that is about sixteen weeks, and less if you can do more.
Your assessor picks up your part-written application. Four meetings - two online calls and two visits to your home - around nine to twelve hours together.
An independent fostering panel reads your assessment and makes a recommendation. Once you are approved, we match you with a child and support you from the day they arrive.
Most people who wonder about fostering rule themselves out before they ever ask, usually for a reason that was never a barrier. Our free guide answers the three questions people actually have.
Read the guide first, then take our short quiz. It takes about fifteen minutes and tells us the sort of children you could care for. There is no obligation, and no one will chase you.
If you have space in your home and space in your heart to care for children who are going through a difficult time, you should consider becoming a foster carer with Sparks Fostering.
Foster carers provide ‘temporary’ care for children who are unable to live with their birth family or with family friends: ‘Temporary’ could mean one night or it could mean several years (sometimes until the young person is 25 years old). Foster carers often grow to care for the children like members of their own family.
Being a foster carer is a challenging role, but also a highly rewarding role, perhaps one of the most rewarding roles one can have. Sparks Fostering offers a high level of support through every step of your journey, to make sure that you feel optimistic and motivated to provide the best possible care for the children.
If you’re not 100% sure about whether you want to foster, contact us to start discussions – we would be happy to build a relationship with you while you learn more about becoming a foster carer.
All of us have ‘sparks’ within us which can be nurtured to grow into beautiful spectacular fireworks.
If our ‘sparks’ are not appropriately nurtured, they can stay small and hidden, or even worse, they can become damaging to ourselves and others.
Sparks Fostering staff and foster carers nurture our own sparks so we can provide the best possible care to the children we look after. We also help the children to grow their sparks so that they can become confident, capable and happy young people.
Roughly 80% of being a foster carer is providing care and attention to the children who come to live in the foster carer’s home. About 20% of the foster carer role is to complete paperwork and attend training and meetings.
Social workers only spend about 10% of their time with children, and around and 90% of their time is spent on professional tasks.
Caring for children who are placed in to fostering homes requires more knowledge and support than is usually required for parenting. Sparks Fostering provides the information and support that foster carers need to look after the children placed with them.
The Sparks Fostering website provides comprehensive guidance about how to meet the specific needs of children living in fostering homes. Our social workers will work through all of the sections of the website with the foster carers, to make sure that the foster carers understand the information and are able to apply it to their role.
Our social workers will also support foster carers to complete their paperwork. Sparks Fostering is proud to have unique recording processes which reduce duplication – so you won’t have to repeat the same information in several different places.
Sparks Fostering is a paper-free fostering provider: This means that communication is more efficient and no time is wasted while collecting and scanning paperwork. All Sparks foster carers and staff are trained to use our software.
By streamlining our processes, Sparks Fostering has more resources to use on quality social work support, relationship building social events and problem solving support groups – which are a combination of online and face to face meetings.
Sparks Fostering also recognises the effort and cost of the assessment process and expenses related to welcoming a child to the home before the first allowance is received, so Sparks Fostering gives all newly approved foster carers a welcome grant. Further information about allowances is available here.
Or call 07920 097 834 · [email protected]