education and training

All fostering services, regardless of size or location, have unrealised potential to enhance their service and provide greater benefit to looked after children in their care.

The Fostering Network can draw on over 45 years of shaping fostering practice across the UK, and a range of in-house and associate experts, to create a bespoke package of consultancy to empower your service to unlock the potential.

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. 

It is important that all panel members receive training to ensure that they have a clear understanding of what their responsibilities are. Training together will also ensure that panel members from different disciplines and backgrounds can work together more effectively.

Panel training in England

The Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011 specify that all fostering services must have a fostering panel.

This course is aimed at all panels, new or established.

The Fostering Network have supported foster carers and services with training for many years, from developing the leading pre-approval training The Skills to Foster™, Managing Allegations and Fostering Panel training through to providing packages of courses covering a variety of topics to meet your foster carers's and service’s needs. Much of our training is designed to benefit both foster carers and social workers.