What support is available for foster families?
Fostering families receive a wide range of support to help them in their role, such as:
Financial support
Foster carers receive an allowance to cover the costs of caring for children, and a fee to renumerate carers for the professional aspect of the role (such as training, supervision, attending multi-agency meetings and record keeping). At Sparks Fostering, we give foster carers 50% of the local authority fee; the average for fostering providers is around 40%. The average payment to Sparks Foster carers in 2024 was £750 per child per week.
Sparks foster carers also receive generous additional allowances and benefits.
Supervision
Regular supervision and professional advice is offered by an experienced qualified social worker. The social worker will get to know all members of the household and will offer support to any members of the household when it is required.
Support work
Some organisations, such as Sparks Fostering, also allocate a support worker to provide additional support directly to the children.
Training
All fostering providers offer training programmes. Some providers offer a few face to face courses each year, some offer online training. At Sparks Fostering our core training programme covers over 40 topics and comprises of short flexible courses which can be completed remotely.
All providers should also be offering child-specific training to meet the individual needs of all children being fostered.
Specialist support
Many providers, like Sparks Fostering, also offer specialist support to carers according to the needs of the carers and the children. This can include education support, counselling, sports tuition or a range of other specialist provision.
Peer support
Foster carers are also supported to meet with each other, either via provider organised events, or they may contact each other. Peer support from other foster carers can be a valuable source of advice and emotional support for foster carers.
Stayover/respite care
Some organisations arrange for children to live with approved respite carers if the fostering family needs a break, or if they’re going abroad and aren’t able to take the child being fostered. At Sparks Fostering we encourage foster carers to identify support carers from within their own networks; we believe that this is better for the children, because the children should have an established positive relationship with the support carers. At Sparks Fostering we do all we can to avoid sending children to live with strangers.
Out of hours support
All foster carers should have out-of-hours contact information for the fostering service and also for the local authority children’s service. Foster carers can access support 24/7.
Independent support and advice
Independent support and advice can be arranged for foster carers who are struggling, either with their task as foster carers, or because they feel dissatisfied with the support offered by the fostering service.
