Welcome and Introduction to the Birmingham Children Trust Foster Carer Handbook

Birmingham Children’s Trust Fostering Agency is dedicated and committed to providing the most nurturing, sensitive, and excellent quality of care to our children and young people in conjunction with our Corporate Parenting Pledge. We share our high aspirations for Children and Young People with our Foster carers.

We hope you’ll find this a helpful and useful guide through the joys and challenges ahead. The handbook is designed to be a reference guide for both new and existing foster carers and while it may not cover every eventuality, it is designed to give you an understanding of your role and tasks, along with some practical information about how you can contribute successfully to a child’s welfare and development. It explains the standards of care that are expected from you and in return what you can expect from us.

We hope it will complement the working relationships that you develop with all those involved with the children entrusted to our care and the training that is available.

The handbook has been published online, so that you can be sure you always reading the most up-to date information.

However, if you do not have easy access to a computer, you can ask your supervising social worker to print you, relevant chapters. All the local policies guidance have been incorporated in this handbook.

Thank you for embarking upon this vital task, being part of Birmingham biggest fostering family and together we can make a lasting difference to the lives of Birmingham children and young people in Care.

The vision and aims of Birmingham Fostering Agency is set out in the statement of purpose (see our Resource section and or website). It is important to know what we are all striving to do. We aim for our Fostering Agency is to provide safe, high-quality foster care placements for children and young people that value, support, and encourage them to grow and develop as individuals. As well as promoting their health and general wellbeing, we believe that children and young people in our care should:

• Be helped to grow and reach their potential;
• Have positive family life experiences through high quality substitute family care;
• Be given safe, nurturing experiences within a variety of caring resources which reflect need, respect difference, value diversity and promote inclusion;
• Be listened to and that services we provide should take these views into consideration;
• Receive high quality, relevant aftercare, which supports their journey into adulthood;
• Have their rights and responsibilities respected and involve them, along with their carers, in all aspects of service delivery.

In doing this we want to provide our foster carers with excellent support, supervision, and training as we value the care, they provide to Birmingham children and young people.

We have been working with young people to gather their experience in foster care. They have given us their views on the things to do and not do which are listed in the table below:

Thank you for being a foster carer for Birmingham Children's Trust and for caring for Birmingham children and young people. We are all delighted to have you with us!