Parent and child placements give parents with young children the opportunity to develop their parenting skills, by living with a specially trained foster carer. These placements can help to keep families together.
Our priority is to keep families together where possible and you could play a big part in helping that to happen. Fostering a family means providing a home to one or both parents with their baby/child/children, offering support, guidance and reassurance and enabling them to see a future together in the community.
It is really rewarding working intensely with a family for a short period of time.Foster Carer
Key skills:
- Good sense of appropriate humour
- Able to accept and understand difference
- Listening skills
- Being able to observe without judgement
- Ability to be organised
- Ability to keep expectations realistic for chaotic parents
- Ability to separate your values from those of the parent
- Ability to understand priorities for parenting, e.g. what really matters
- Ability to form positive relationships with distressed and often angry young parents
- Being able to manage and work with differing needs
- Being able to give advice and news in a calm, respectful manner
- Being able to keep a record of what’s happening in the child’s life
- Willingness to keep a baby in place if the parent leaves
Fostering parents and their children is a commitment which lasts a minimum of 12 weeks and a maximum of 12 months. Offering a placement to a young family allows them a chance to learn and with your help, prove they can look after their child.