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.…
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Today we talk to Ben Whitehead, a manager within Leeds City Council’s fostering team, about Leeds City Council’s supported lodgings initiative. The initiative provides lodgings for young people aged 16-21, and we wanted to know how this new initiative works and who can get involved and become a supported lodgings provider… Supported lodgings are a…
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My journey as a single adopter started over 2 years ago. It was a massive decision to apply to adopt, after looking into all of the other options. I did lots of background reading, and spoke to friends who had already adopted to get as much information as I could, before I applied. I was…
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Today we hear from Heather, who manages the adoption and fostering panel service at Leeds City Council. The panels are the independent groups of people who prospective adoptive parents and foster carers meet near the end of their assessment process. We started by asking her how she got into managing the service. “I’ve worked for…
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“Adopting a child is such an exciting and nerve racking experience in equal measure, but adopting siblings is a really rewarding thing to do because the children have such a special connection – they are forever linked by their shared life story. “We have 3 fantastic, amazing adopted children – siblings, aged 7, 6 and…
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Today is our final part from our gay couple, writing about their experience of becoming foster carers for Leeds City Council. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. “We had spent the last few months being assessed to become foster carers. We felt relieved and satisfied when it was all completed and submitted to the relevant people.…
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“My partner and I had just started the assessment process to become foster carers. Very early in the process we were told we had to attend a course called Skills to Foster. This was a three day course and is run fairly frequently often over weekends, to minimise the time taken off work. Having sorted…
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Here is part three of our five part series from our gay foster carers, talking about their experience of becoming carers with Leeds City Council. “My partner and I came away from the open evening more determined to become foster carers than when we arrived. Later the same week, having left our details, we were contacted by the recruitment…
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“We had thought long and hard about going into fostering. We hadn’t spoken to anyone about it – family, friends or professionals. We had to be sure ourselves before we discussed it with the outside world. Then we heard about an open evening specifically for gay & lesbian people being run by Leeds City Council…
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This week is the national LGBT adoption and fostering week. In Leeds we have many gay and lesbian adoptive parents and foster carers, with several going through the process at the moment. Some are single and some in couples – but they all want to make a difference in a child’s life, and to be…
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Today, in anticipation of our special information evening on Wednesday for people to find out about fostering teenagers, we hear from some of our very own award winning foster carers, John and Stephanie Forbes from Leeds. “We have been fostering teenagers since 1982. Our first placement was a 13 year old girl – and she…
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A few weeks ago, one of our adopters, Carrie, was interviewed on BBC Radio Leeds by Liz Green on the morning show. If you missed it, here is what they talked about. Liz – In Yorkshire, we’ve got more children available for adoption than ever before. Figures say there are 500 youngsters wanting to find new homes. Carrie…
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