Foster Care Training and Support

Foster Care Training Overview

Continuous training and development will be a key component in your journey as a foster carer and looking after children and young people

We have a team of trained professionals who deliver training sessions on a raft of subjects including but not limited to:

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

Skills to Foster

Your training starts with our Skills to Foster course. This course generally runs over two or three sessions. You will meet members of our staff team along with people and families who are already fostering with Capstone. 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 including:

• 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 training each year to improve your skills standards. This training will cover areas such as:

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

We also have more specialised training for 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

Fostering Changes Training

Fostering Changes aims to help you manage difficult and challenging child behaviour. This can help you to form more positive relationships with the children you look after which in itself is a cornerstone for positive change and helps enormously in improving their long-term outcomes.

Fostering Changes training is available to all our carers and is a priority for those working on our MATs (Multi-disciplinary Assessment & Treatment) Therapeutic Fostering Framework.
Fostering Changes training delivered in-house by social workers is a course supported by DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families) and noted in Care Matters as a premier course for foster carers.

The programme delivers practical skills and advice to you to help you with behaviour identification and management. This is an essential course to support the longevity and stability of placements.

Foster Care Support Overview

At Capstone we know that the most important factor to successful placements 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
• 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 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 and get in touch with a member of our helpful team today or call us on 0800 012 4004.