Types of Fostering

Soundly Fostering provides a variety of different foster placements to meet the differing needs of children who need to be fostered. We will use our robust matching process to ensure that children are matched with foster carers who are able to meet their needs. 

We consider placing children from 0-17, sibling groups, and children with learning difficulties and physical disabilities. Siblings can be whole sibling groups, or just those who the placing authority feel can be placed together. Children who are placed with learning or physical disabilities may require foster carers with additional specialist skills, sometimes we are able to provide training for these needs, other times it may be a pre-requisite prior to the child being placed.

Short-term and Bridging foster care

This type of fostering is aimed to meet the needs of children who require a foster placement on a short-term basis. This may be before returning to their birth family or moving to an alternative long-term or permanent family. These can also be pre-adoptive. It may be that the same children are eventually placed with you on a long-term/permanent basis, if it is agreed that this is the best match for everyone.

Emergency foster care

These meet the immediate needs of children on an emergency basis. Homes for these children are often needed on the same day or night, and at weekends.

Respite fostering

A respite foster carer provides short-term care for children, this might be for a few days, or longer, depending on the need. We arrange planned respite where possible, so the child can build a trusted relationship with the same respite carer.

A respite placement provides support to families and children who generally do not have their own support network.

Long-term/permanent foster care

Sometimes the best solution is for the child to remain with a foster family for several years, or up until they are ready to take care of themselves, which is where long-term foster care comes in.

Children placed long-term are very much a part of the foster carer’s family, you would need to be able to commit to them for the agreed timeframe. Matching for long-term placements is crucial, you will be their care-giver and role model for their future success in life and relationships.

Enhanced fostering

Our enhanced fostering is for children who have more significant complex needs. The experiences that these children have endured means that they sometimes communicate their needs through difficult or challenging behaviours, rather than being able to talk about it.

Our aim is to support the child and their foster carers in the process of forming secure, lasting relationships, we know this can be very challenging. We also want to provide these children with the basis to form and maintain loving and trusting relationships with others outside of the fostering family, ‘in order to help them maintain school placements and successfully move towards independence, when they’re ready.

Our ‘enhanced’ foster carers need an added layer of self-awareness, reflective capacity and creativity, this allows them to think more holistically in their responses to children. They must have the ability to look beyond behaviours, to what a child is trying to communicate. Essentially, they must demonstrate a real commitment to providing the kind of continuing relationship that is such an important part of the healing process.

Parent and child fostering

The purpose of the parent and child foster care is to promote parenting skills and responsibility. Our parent and child fostering service provides opportunities for the observation, participation in the assessment and support of parents with their children. We support, nurture and educate, then we take a step back to see how the parents have responded, all the time ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the child is prioritised.

Parents sometimes need a little bit of extra help caring for their children.

We want to provide an opportunity for parents to fully engage with the foster carer, to feel safe and to hone and develop their parenting skills where possible. A parent and child foster placement may be the key opportunity for the parent to be able to care for their child in the longer term. With the support of the carers, they can develop the skills and attitude needed to safely care for their child in the community.

Our trained ‘parent and child’ foster carers understand their role as enablers and teachers of parenting skills and responsibilities. They work with parents to help them relate to their children in order to develop secure, healthy attachment relationships with them.

When parents are unable to meet the needs of their children, foster carers need to be able to safeguard the child and report as necessary.

For further details please call 01842 818793 or email us here

Types of Fostering | Soundly Fostering