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This publication complements our training course of the same name and explores the issues and responsibilities involved in contact, why it is so important for children and young people, and how foster families can overcome the challenges it can pose.

Ongoing contact with friends and family is a highly complex part of fostering. It is an emotive subject for fostered children and young people, birth families and foster carers. Facilitating contact can be a challenging process, both practically and emotionally.

Our Contact training course outlines why contact is so important, looks at how to build strategies to improve the quality, safety and outcomes of contact with family and friends, and explores how foster carers can support contact plans whilst ensuring their own needs are recognised and met. For details of training provided by the Fostering Network see our training section.

Pathways Through Fostering

The Fostering Network recognises that foster carers are skilled professionals and is committed to offering resources to help them develop their skills, knowledge and expertise.
Pathways Through Fostering is a unique post-approval professional development curriculum created by the UK's voice of foster care.

In consultation with our members and expert staff, and in line with new standards and developments in foster care, we have identified six core topics which, we believe, are crucial to both newly-approved and experienced carers. These are:

• Safer Caring
• Contact
• Managing Behaviour
• Health
• Education
• Attachment

Each topic is the subject of a publication and a training course. The two are closely linked and, while each can stand alone, we believe foster carers will benefit from both completing the training and having a copy of the publication to refer to at home.

The Pathways series places its emphasis clearly on practical, accessible information. Both the training courses and the publications focus on dealing with day-to-day challenges, not on complicated theory. Packed with helpful guidance and case studies, they will help foster carers to enhance their knowledge and develop their skills, in order to provide the best possible care for children and young people.