A beginner’s guide to fostering

Fostering can be an incredibly rewarding experience for foster carers as they help and support a young person during the most important years of their life.  We currently have around 600 foster carers and are looking for more people to help improve the lives of our cities young people by getting in contact with our fostering team.

In today’s child friendly blog we have a beginner’s guide explaining more about what fostering caring is….

Fostering is a temporary arrangement, where the child or children are still legally in the care of Leeds City Council, and foster carers look after them on our behalf, and get a weekly allowance for doing so. It’s a very rewarding thing to do, and you can make a massive difference to a child’s life by being a secure, stable point in what may be a chaotic start to life.

The placements are temporary and foster carers can be as busy as it suits them – with some carers taking breaks in between children, and some always having lots of children at once.As a local authority and Leeds largest fostering service, Leeds City Council’s fostering team is equip to support its carers through every step of their fostering journey – from their first register of interest, through to fostering a child.

We welcome enquiries from people of all religions, races, genders and sexuality. Our foster caring community reflects a wide range of circumstances and life experience and we assess every application on an individual basis. Every day we work with foster carers who are dedicated to improving the lives of young people and we’re always looking to work with more.

Fostering is about improving the lives of children and young people, you don’t need any special qualification to become a foster carer but you do need to genuinely enjoy the challenges of childcare.

We support carers throughout their fostering journey – preparing all our potential foster carers for what is involved in fostering, and offering a full range of support and advice when they’re approved. There’s no such thing as a typical foster carer and we know everybody has something to give from their experience and knowledge.

If you want to find out more, look on our website www.foster4leeds.co.uk, call (0113) 247 7443, or come along to one of our information evenings.  They are held every month or so and you can find out more information by registering your interest: http://www.leeds.gov.uk/foster4leeds/Pages/Register-your-interest.aspx. 

(photos posed by models)