The Fostering Network
Key Facts
Location
Project Criteria
Project funding
£84,681
Funding round
The Fostering Network takes the lead in raising standards for the 50,000 children and young people fostered in the UK. We work in partnership with others to define high standards and facilitate their implementation. We are a charity set up in 1974.
There is considerable concern about the plight of young people in care who face parenthood but the services available to tackle its impact on young people's lives or those of their children are thin on the ground. Our challenge is to generate forward thinking interventions that break the cycle of disadvantage that can so easily carry on through the generations.
Foster Care for Young Parents is an innovative Parenting Fund project that seeks to involve young parents, foster carers, local authorities and others in the fostering service in a consultation exercise to establish the needs of all involved. Our aims are to:
- Increase the provision of support for young parents in foster care and those leaving care to the age of 18.
- Help young people in care improve parenting skills through the support of foster carers.
- Help young people understand relationships and in particular to support the involvement of young fathers in parenting.
- Promote foster care as an effective means of supporting young parents;
- Equip foster carers with the skills, information, advice and support they need to support young parents.
- Disseminate project findings and good practice amongst all involved in the fostering service and young parents.
- Increase the capacity of organisations and carers involved in the fostering service to support young parents through providing training, advice and information.
We will do this by:
- mapping current service provision and identifying good practice
- promoting the project through workshops with young parents in care and foster carers
- consulting and involving young parents, foster carers and foster providers as a way of identifying the needs of beneficiaries and stakeholders
- developing a model of care for young parents
- disseminating the results through a series of seminars, providing training, support and information for young parents, foster carers and fostering agencies
- promoting the use of foster care as an effective means of improving the parenting skills of young people in care and the life chances of their children
- providing advice and information to our membership arising from the lessons of the project
- printing fact-sheets for young parents in care and foster carers. These will be freely distributed through local authorities and fostering agencies.