Why Choose Diversity Foster Care?
We are a friendly family orientated, independent fostering agency with a proven track record of recruiting, training and supporting foster carers and their families. Our staff team are approachable and experienced and we offer a wide range of support. We also offer excellent training including accredited NVQ qualifications for carers with over two years experience.
As a foster carer for Diversity Foster Care you will receive:
- 24 hour support, a generous fostering allowance and access to regular high quality training courses
- You will be treated as part of a professional team and have access to organised activities for children
- Access to The Diversity Foster Carers Support Group and additional support for carers who choose to care for children with complex needs.
- Free membership for you and your family to Foster Talk an independent organisation which supports foster carers.
- A range of other benefits
Our Values
Diversity Foster Care strives to be recognised and respected for the quality of our work, professional expertise and the support given to children and their carers. We embrace children and carers from all walks of life, cultural and religious backgrounds and strive to treat everyone with respect and dignity. Keeping children and young people safe, promoting their welfare and offering secure, loving and stable foster homes is at the heart of everything that we do.
Therefore, we strive to support carers to achieve the following:
- Ensure that children and young people are placed in safe environments
- Assist children and young people to build secure relationships in warm and nurturing foster homes
- Place the needs and welfare of children first
- Listen to and take account of the views of children and young people in our care.
- Act as positive role models.
- Assist children to reach their full potential at school college and university and through undertaking leisure activities, interests and hobbies.
- Assist children to achieve and sustain good mental and physical health
Our Support
As a foster carer, when you have a child placed, Diversity Foster Care are fully committed to providing full support to you and any child placed. All of our foster carers will have an allocated Supervising Social Worker from the time they are approved. Your allocated Supervising Social Worker is a qualified Social Worker who will guide you through your fostering journey and offer support and information ongoing.
The Supervising Social Worker undertakes regular visits to your home offering you supervision and guidance. Diversity foster care offers 24 hour support with access to qualified social workers on our Out Of Hours telephone support service which operates outside of office hours, weekends and bank holidays. This includes access to experienced managers. We have devised a comprehensive training programme which anticipates the needs of foster carers. We understand from our own experience, how to build your skills and knowledge as foster carers and this is reflected in the range of training and workshops that we offer. Diversity foster care has appropriately qualified Support Workers who offer direct work and support with looked after children and their foster carers.
Our Training
^Foster carers are welcomed as part of the professional network around the child, therefore it is important for foster carers to access training to support them in this key role. We offer NVQ accredited training as well as general training.
Diversity Foster Care provides a Skills to Foster training course for people who want to become foster carers. This is a 3 day training course and is a comprehensive training which will begin to prepare you for the role and responsibilities of a foster carer. It will inform you of our values, principles and expectations, from the fostering agency and the local authority, as well as legislation around fostering and child care. Once you are approved as a foster carer Diversity Foster Care expects that you will complete the Training, Support and Development standards which will underpin your professional learning as a foster carer. The Training Support and Development Standards (TSDS) involves workshops, group discussion and learning from each other to develop you as a foster carer.
New foster carers will complete their TSDS portfolio by the time they have been approved for 12 months. As a foster carer you will be expected to attend ongoing training and Diversity Foster Care will offer many different training courses every year such as Safeguarding; Child Protection; First Aid; Managing Challenging Behaviour, as well as more specialist training. You will have a training and development profile which is reviewed every year and be given the opportunity to undertake NVQ accredited training once you have had at least two years experience as a foster carer.