A therapeutic approach
When you foster a child with us, you don’t raise them alone. You’ll be part of a team of people who are all committed to delivering life-changing outcomes for children and young people in care.
What is therapeutic foster care?
Therapeutic foster care is a specialist type of foster care that is tailored to meet the complex needs of children who have suffered significant neglect or trauma before being placed into care.
What makes us different to other fostering agencies is that everyone involved understands that children and young people with histories of trauma, abuse, neglect or attachment difficulties need therapeutic input to help their wellbeing and development.
Through our unique Team Parenting approach, we provide foster carers with support from a network of childcare experts who all work together with each child or young person to look after every single area of their well-being.
Together, we can give every child or young person a safe, stable place to grow up in that in turn gives them the best chance of recovering from their past and becoming an emotionally resilient adult.
FCA Team Parenting model
We believe that therapeutic foster care should look after every aspect of a child or young person’s health and wellbeing so that they can form positive, attached relationships with their carers. Our Team Parenting Approach centres children around a team of people who are all committed to helping foster children have the happiest, healthiest future.
This collaborative, therapeutic approach include therapists, education workers, social workers and support workers. You’ll be part of a large, supportive community which has achieved outstanding results for children and young people in terms of their emotional recovery.
Training and support for therapeutic fostering
- Packed calendar of events and activities: we hold regular events throughout the year to help foster parents, children and young people bond and have fun together.
- Therapy Groups: whether a foster parent is new or experienced, they can come to our carer therapy groups to learn new skills. Together, carers share experiences, help each other solve difficulties and find new ways to think about problems.
- First-class training programme: all our carers have access to a comprehensive training programme including mandatory classroom training on child development and attachment, promoting positive behaviour, and communication and teamwork. There is also a library of complimentary e- learning modules that carers can do in their own time.
- 24/7 Support: our out of hours support is there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
The role of a therapeutic foster parent
We want all our foster parents to become therapeutic parents so they can help their foster child overcome problems from their past to become confident, resilient people.
Therapeutic foster care involves the following:
- Helping their foster child feel safe by understanding their fears and history, and giving nurturing reassurance.
- Focusing on making a connection with the child or young person and using a range of coping skills.
- Engaging in supervision with their social worker and developing good working relationships with the rest of the parenting team.
- Attending meetings regularly and have an input in them.
- Recording and reporting to meet compliance requirements.
- Capturing memories and magic moments in the young personʼs life.
- Helping their foster child or young person feel better when they’re distressed.
- Helping their foster child or young person develop positive and healthy ways to overcome trauma informed behaviour and grow more resilient.
The Team Parenting approach allows foster parents and our looked after children to work with various other team members to ensure the child gets the required level of support to meet their needs. Everyone can work together to fully understand a child’s difficulties and offer support to overcome them.
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