Why Fostering Connections?
Fostering Connections will enable foster carers to support each other and share experiences.
Foster carers are at the heart of child care in Wales, providing around 71 per cent of children in care with a home and family. They provide looked after children with the vital care, safety and stability of ordinary family life.
But not only do these children need love and care, they need skilled, individual attention from their foster carers, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for however long they are with them. Many of these children have special needs and many present real challenges to foster carers who, for much of the time, are working in the isolation of their own homes.
The Fostering Connections membership project will enable stakeholders within the foster care service across Wales to exchange ideas, identify key issues and campaign around them. The project will play a vital role in improving foster care across Wales.
Research has identified the need to involve foster carers and children in care in making improvements to the foster care service. For example, the Fostering Network Wales report Fit to Foster? (2003), commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government, identified the need to involve foster carers and children in care in making improvements to the fostering service.
However as foster carers are only allowed to work for one fostering service, their opportunities to share their ideas and opinions may be limited to those within that service. There is a need to provide links across these boundaries. The report also identified the need for increased awareness of national issues and the facilitation of local group/membership meetings.
What have we set out to do?
We aim to enable those involved in foster care to meet together and:
- identify the key issues in foster care in Wales today
- ensure that foster carers' voices are heard by those who can change things for the better, for example managers or politicians, thus impacting both at local and national levels
- support each other
- learn from each other
- share good practice
- be part of an information sharing group and be kept up to date about the latest developments in foster care.