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 Course

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. 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

Developmental Training 

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

Specialist Foster Training 

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

PACE Training 

We use an element of the DDP model known as PACE at the heart of all our training, which is a way of thinking, feeling and communicating with children in care to support them to feel safe. PACE stands for:

• Playfulness
• Acceptance
• Curiosity
• Empathy

Children who have experienced trauma whilst they are growing up develop strong protective strategies to help them survive in difficult circumstances. With the PACE training model, our carers are able to build a foundation of trust, allowing the children in their care to open up, be themselves, find safety in their key adult relationships and reduce their need for learned protective strategies.

With pace training for foster carers, our caregivers are able to approach their children with empathy and curiosity whilst also reducing conflict in the foster home, creating a calm and loving environment. At Capstone, we encourage caregivers to use PACE to look beyond behaviours - otherwise deemed as negative or challenging - and search for the unmet need beyond it.

DDP Training

All our social work teams are also trained in “Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy”, otherwise known as DDP training.

DDP training aims to instil a therapeutic ethos to the support provided to all fostering families. It primarily focuses on developing a greater understanding of children’s protective strategies within their relationships (known as ‘attachment styles’) and the impact of trauma on development. DDP training allows our internal team to deliver consistent therapeutic support to our foster families as they develop healthy patterns of relating and communicating with their foster children using the PACE model.

Training, Support and Development Standards

All foster carers must produce a Training, Support and Development Standards portfolio within the first 12 months of fostering to comply with the National Minimum Standards 2011. This is a government requirement to ensure you know, understand and can deliver the National Minimum Standards of foster care.   

Our responsibility is to support you in meeting these standards. So, to give you the best opportunity, we will begin your training during the application process. We will arrange for you to learn about the different areas of the standards in your “Skills to Foster” training so that you can confidently meet the outcomes for each area.

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, we expect 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 the following years.

Supporting our Foster Carers

Here at Capstone, we know that one of the most important elements to creating a happy foster family is the support offered to our carers.

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

Dedicated social worker

When you become a foster parent with Capstone, you’ll have access to calls and visits from a dedicated social worker as often as you need. We also provide our foster carers with access to an out-of-hours service with access to support from a social worker 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Support groups

We also provide our carers with regular support groups where you and your family have the opportunity to talk to other carers and their families in your local area in a safe environment.  

Bespoke MATTs support

We offer a unique support service which provides children and young people with access to mental health services. MATTs (Multi-disciplinary assessment treatment and therapy service) provides foster families with the tools they need to proactively support children who have experienced trauma. This support includes a bespoke plan with access to services such as;

• Mental health nurses
• Psychotherapists
• Speech and language therapy
• Play therapy

Together with MATTs, foster parents have access to support to help create long term stable homes for children in care.

Plus:

• 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 are 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.