Parenting is excellent experience for people who are considering fostering, especially if you’ve raised children from newborn through to adulthood. During the fostering assessment the social worker will ask your friends and family for references, including any information about your ability to parent. If your child is under age 5, a reference will be requested from the child’s health visitor. If the child is of school age, a reference will be obtained from their school. Good references from other people involved in your child’s life, and from the child themselves (if they are able to provide a reference) strengthens your fostering application considerably.
Parenting can also make the task of fostering much easier to adapt to, especially if the child to be fostered has some of the same needs as the children that have already been raised by the fostering family.
If there are children in the fostering home, their wishes and feelings are taken into consideration both at the assessment stage and following approval. Sparks Fostering regularly checks in with all children in the fostering home, to make sure that the needs of all of the children in the home are met. We invite all children to family days out so that we can all get to know each other well.
It’s not an essential requirement that foster carers are parents. Childcare experience can be obtained via other routes, such as being an involved family member of a child, or by working with children.