Foster Care Training and Support

Our Foster Care Training Courses

Continuous fostering training and development will be a key component in your journey to becoming a foster carer - ensuring you have all the tools required for looking after children and young people.

We have a team of trained professionals who deliver foster care training sessions on a range of subjects, including (but not limited to):

• Child Protection & Safeguarding
• First Aid
• Logging, Recording & Data Protection
• Managing Behaviour
• Safer Caring
• Paediatric Emergency First Aid 
• Vulnerable children 

'Skills to Foster' Training

Your foster parent training will begin with our ‘Skills to Foster’ course, which will generally run over two or three sessions. You will meet members of our staff team along with people and families who are already fostering with Capstone – allowing you to meet like-minded individuals to gain knowledge and experience from. During this course, you’ll learn about what’s really involved in looking after children who are in care and have the opportunity to learn with others who are also making an application to foster.

The Skills to Foster course covers the following areas of development:

• What foster carers do
• Understanding the needs of children in foster care
• Safe-caring
• Helping children to deal with change
• Managing challenging behaviour
• Working with children who display sexualised behaviour
• Survival techniques for foster carers
• The placement process and finance matters
• Preparing for Panel
• First Aid

Once you have completed your assessment and have received approval as a registered foster carer, you will be encouraged to attend fostering training regularly to improve your skills standards. This training will cover areas such as:

• Attachment disorders
• PACE
• DDP
• Online safety
• Safeguarding children and child protection
• Children and young people who self-harm
• Learning disability awareness

We also have more specialised training for foster carers who:

• Have the skills and desire to work with children and young people with more complex needs or disabilities
• Wish to do Parent and Child Assessments
• Care for unaccompanied asylum seeker children
• Support children moving from residential care
• Provide Therapeutic care
• Are interested in safeguarding topics such as child sexual exploitation, e-safety and radicalisation

Joint Foster carer training

Foster parents are required to take responsibility for their own learning and demonstrate ongoing professional development. In a joint foster parent household, it is our expectation that both foster parents complete the mandatory training in the first year and then, on an ongoing basis, continue to meet the minimum requirements in following years.

Our Foster Care Support

Here at Capstone, we know that one of the most important factors to successful fostering households is the foster support offered to our carers.

The main elements of the support for foster carers we provide includes:

• Phone calls and visits from a dedicated social worker as regularly as needed, but generally every two to four weeks.
• Fostering training in all aspects of looking after children with challenging behaviours
• Fun social events for carers at least twice a year
• A network of foster carers in your area supporting each other
• Up to 14 days paid holiday (respite) per year
• Competitive fostering allowances paid to you regularly and on time
• Out of Hours service that gives you access to a social worker who knows about you and your placement, 24 hours a day, every day of the year
• An assurance from us that we will listen to you and your needs and work hard to support you in a professional and friendly way.

Find out about the benefits of fostering with Capstone, or get in touch with a member of our helpful team today for more information about our foster parent training courses.