Community Foster Care are a non-profit organisation that provide foster placements across Lancashire. Their vision is for a world where all children and young people grow up in families rich in the essential ingredients required for them to realise their ambitions and dreams.

Last week I met with the Community Foster Care senior leadership Team, Mark, Emma and Dan at their office in Lancaster to hear more about the fantastic work that Community Foster Care does throughout our community. Their ethos is grounded in the recognition that fostering a child comes with some complexities, many children in the care system have extensive trauma as a result of abuse, neglect and highly disrupted beginnings. This often results in complex needs and challenging behaviour.

This is where Community Foster Care are the experts. Their therapeutic approach to fostering is about parenting in a different way, in a way that understands these children had a different starting point in life, at a crucial time in their development and attachment building.

The process to become a foster parent with Community Foster Care is selective and rigorous, however,  at our meeting it was important for them to convey that there are so many people and families that would be brilliant foster carers who have never given it much thought. You don’t need to own a home, or be in a relationship/marriage, you don’t need to be in full-time employment or have a specific level of income. These things are not barriers. Foster carers need to be open to collaboration, preparation, training and feedback, they need to be patient and willing to try different approaches to parenting.  If you think that you have these qualities and would consider becoming a foster carer you can find out more by clicking here. 

I’d like to thank Community Foster Care and all fostering organisations and families for the important work that you do. All children in this country deserve a fair chance and a family setting, whatever that might look like, that can give them the opportunities afforded to children that do not end up in the care system.

There are many elements of the care system that don’t work in the favour of creating successful foster families and too many children continue to be failed by adults as well as politicians, whether that’s due to inconsistencies between DFE Policies and DWP funding or putting up barriers to children having access to their casefiles and birth family histories. Its clear that changes are needed. But despite this, it is reassuring to know that organisations like Community Foster Care are going above and beyond, using innovative research and techniques in matching fosterers with children to create trust and bonds between vulnerable children and caring families that have found purpose in fostering.  This is reflected in their stability rates which stand at 95%, meaning that just 5% of the pairings made by Community Foster Care need readjusting.