Foster Care Training Strategy

Training Programme

To ensure that foster carers and their families are trained in the skills required to provide high quality care and to meet the needs of each child or young person placed in their care
To meet the requirements of the National Foster Care Standards
To ensure that our foster care training strategy contributes to the five outcomes for Looked After Children from ‘Every Child Matters’:
Being healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle
Staying safe: being protected from harm and neglect
Enjoying and achieving: getting the most out of life and developing the skills for adulthood
Making a positive contribution: being involved with the community and society and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour
Economic well-being: not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full potential in life

To provide pre-approval induction and ongoing training for each carer approved by Devon County Council’s Children and Young People’s Services
To create opportunities for carers to benefit from the experience and knowledge of existing carers
To deliver training which fits into the framework of equal opportunities and anti-discriminatory practice
To deliver training in a way which facilitates attendance by offering accessible times and venues, and by meeting childcare costs and other reasonable expenses
To create opportunities for carers to achieve nationally recognised qualifications
To create opportunities for foster carers to experience training with social care staff

Produce an annual training programme for foster carers
The carers’ annual fostering review will include an appraisal of training and development needs and take into account those arising from new legislation and policy developments
Each training course is evaluated individually as well as in conjunction with the annual evaluation of the whole training programme with involvement from carers and fostering supervising social workers
By listening to and responding to feedback about our training programme