The Skills to Foster™ is an essential resource for anyone involved in preparing new applicants for fostering and assessing prospective foster carers.
We are pleased to share that the new edition of The Skills to Foster will be available in 2024. It includes a new focus on equality, diversity and inclusion, and expanded content on child development, trauma and therapeutic approaches to fostering.
This new edition will be accessible via a learning management system, designed to support services and foster carers to access the resource in a variety of ways.
The Skills to Foster can be delivered in person, virtually and offer remote learning elements between sessions. By accessing the resource in this way, fostering services will always benefit from the most up to date training, with updates coming straight through the system.
Learning management system support
We want our fostering services and carers to get the most out of the platform and will support users to do this. The Fostering Network will be offering services training on the platform through:
• A series of masterclasses with our learning and development team
• Our The Skills to Foster: train the trainer course
• Direct delivery of the pre-approval course to prospective foster carers
• Video tutorials to walk services through every part of using the platform to deliver The Skills to Foster
• Guidance on how to access and manage reports for trainees on the platform
The Skills to Foster has helped countless foster carers and services over the years, and we are excited to see the further difference it makes.
The Skills to Foster third edition is currently available to be purchased, this edition also provides the materials for course leaders electronically to support hybrid and online delivery of the pre-approval course. We also have training notes and top tips for delivering online training. Find out more about the digital edition.
Order The Skills to Foster™ Third Edition now
The Skills to Foster™ Assessment Materials
The Skills to Foster™ Assessment Materials complement the pre-approval course and are used to assess potential foster carers on the basis of their skills, knowledge, abilities and experiences. These are available on an annual licence basis for use with mainstream carers and also family and friends carers.
Reflecting the latest changes in legislation and produced in an interactive PDF format, the materials are designed to be easier to complete for social workers and give a clear recommendation for decision makers.
The Skills to Foster™ Assessment:
- ensures consistent, high quality assessment of potential foster carers;
- is fostering specific, placing emphasis on duties particular to foster care, ensuring applicants have an adequate support network and making provisions for the sons and daughters of foster carers;
- actively involves the applicant, making sure they are aware of what being a foster carer involves and how they can be a positive role model for the children and young people they look after;
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is easy to use and easy to adapt and customise to reflect your recruitment process and needs.
By using both The Skills to Foster™ pre-approval training and the assessment process to train and assess your foster carers, we estimate that you can provide evidence for over 70 per cent of the Training, Support and Development Standards for Foster Care in England.
Order The Skills to Foster™ assessment materials
The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review and Fostering Services Regulations 2013
The publication of The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review and Fostering Services (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2013 introduced a two-stage process to the assessment of foster carers in England. In order to provide a simple but clear means of tracking compliance with the amendments to the regulations, The Fostering Network has now introduced a Fostering Assessment Progress Sheet. This form has been introduced as an addition to the existing The Skills to Foster™ assessment documents and acts as a tracking document.
The Fostering Assessment Progress Sheet, plus an explanatory document, is available for members to download.
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