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Role and responsibilities

What happens now I am approved?

Once you have been approved as a foster carer you will be allocated a supervising social worker from the Fostering Service. You will be asked to enter into a Foster Care Agreement (Word doc) [33KB] with the Fostering Service.

Once you have met your supervising social worker, you will both sign a Supervision Agreement, so that you are both clear about roles and responsibilities. Your supervising social worker will ensure that you have had the induction checklist for foster carers.

Supervising social workers will provide you with support and supervision on a regular basis. They'll visit you every four weeks in the first year of approval, every six weeks thereafter or whenever there is a need to visit or support.

Supervising social workers will make sure you have all the information and support needed to offer the best possible placements to children and young people.

Your approval as a foster carer will be regularly reviewed. For more information see our procedure Review of foster carers.

The service takes great care to carefully match children to the most appropriate foster carers and placements. For more information see our Matching policy procedure.

We take into account:

  • The views of the child in accordance with their age, understanding and experience
  • The assessment and skills level the foster carer is offering
  • The appropriateness of the match in relation to the child or young person's ethnicity, religious preferences and language
  • Geographical location to assist in the maintaining of social networks and educational provision
  • Consideration of the foster carer's family's needs
  • Consideration of other Looked After Children in placement

There will always be a plan of introductions when opportunity allows.

Dependent on the status of your approval and availability, you're likely to be contacted by your supervising social worker (if it is a planned placement) or a member of the duty team within the service to establish whether they are in the position to support a child or young person who is in need of a placement.

Prior to the worker making contact, we'll try to have a discussion with the supervising social worker, or their line manager, to determine if the child or young person in need of a placement would be an appropriate match in terms of the skills of the foster carer and the needs of other children within the foster family.

We'll also be talking to the social worker of the child in placement, if you're already looking after children. You'll need to be given as much information as possible during your discussion with the worker, so you are able to make an informed decision. If it's a planned placement, there will be opportunities to meet with the child or young person's allocated social worker.

Your role

  • Providing a safe and caring environment for the child or young person
  • Supporting and meeting the physical and mental health needs of the child/young person (See the Norfolk Fostering Service health and medication policy and procedure for more information)
  • Ensuring a child/young person's attendance at educational settings including nursery, school, college and any placement. Encourage them to learn and help them with their homework. (See the Education policy procedure for more information)
  • Contributing to life story work while a child is in placement with you
  • Recording
  • Attending meetings and advocating for the child
  • Training (attending mandatory courses and CPD)
  • Supporting and, if appropriate, facilitating contact with a child's birth family and significant others
  • Establishing a routine, clear boundaries and an understanding of issues that impact upon the child or young person
  • Supporting and promoting the child's development, so they can achieve their full potential and have the best life chances

What information do I need when a child is placed?

It will be useful to prepare a list of questions that you may want to ask when you receive a call about a placement. If you are unsure about anything at all, you must discuss this.

You may wish to ask the following questions when you are contacted:

  • Basic information in terms of gender, age, cultural or religious needs
  • The child's social worker's name, if not, who you'll contact in the future
  • Why do the children need to be looked after and is this their first experience of being in care?
  • How long is this placement needed for?
  • What legal orders is the child or young person subject to? Are care proceedings involved?
  • Does the child or young person have any physical or mental health needs and how are these met?
  • Does the child have a disability? What support is provided to meet the children and young people's needs?
  • Does the child have any communication issues?
  • What school, nursery, placement does the child attend and what arrangements are going to be made to maintain their placement there?
  • Do they have a Education, health and care (EHC) plan?
  • What are the contact arrangements?
  • What is the child or young person's behaviour like? Have there been any occasions of self-harming, aggression, harming animals, sexualised behaviour, absconding, offending or fire setting?
  • Do they have any difficulties in managing personal hygiene?
  • What is the child or young person's past history? Have they been abused or have they been known to abuse others?
  • If there are any established challenging behaviours, are there any known triggers and what are the strategies for managing such behaviours?
  • Which professionals are involved in supporting the child or young person?

If you're on the Out of Hours list, there will be occasions when the emergency duty team (EDT or the Fostering out of hours duty worker) will make contact to ask if you would consider taking a placement on an emergency basis.

In situations, like this there might only be limited information about the child or young person available. This might also involve having to give a temporary change of your approval in order for you to take the placement, if it's felt that you have the necessary skills or experience and are in the position to support this child or young person.

Meeting the child or young person

Wherever possible, there should be a period of introductions between you, your family and the child. This should involve:

  • The child or young person receiving information about you, your home and members of your family network. This is the profile which is designed by you and it should be shared with the child and child's social worker prior to the initial meeting, if possible.
  • The child or young person having at least one overnight visit before a placement is confirmed.
  • Throughout the introduction, you should talk to the child or young person about general information including bedtimes, meals, visitors, pocket money, school, privacy and your expectations around behaviour.
  • The child should be encouraged to talk about what they expect, so they can sort out any concerns before the placement starts.

The Child's Care Plan

Every looked-after child must have a Care Plan completed and updated by the social worker.

The overall purpose of the plan is to safeguard and promote the interests of the child, prevent drift and focus work with the child and the family. The Care Plan must be regularly reviewed at Looked After Reviews.

The Care Plan sets out its overall objectives and timescales (including, by the time of the second Looked After Review, how permanence will be achieved for the child), summarises the needs of the child, identifies the services required to meet those needs and describes the management and support of the plan by the local authority. Before a Court grants a Care Order it must be satisfied that a suitable Care Plan has been drawn up.

The child's overarching Care Plan should include:

The Child's Placement Plan

The supervising social worker, the child/young person, the child's family members, if appropriate, the child's social worker and you will attend the Placement Planning Meeting. This is completed either on the day or within five days of a placement being made.

In any event, essential information for providing safe care to the child must be available to you at the start of the placement. It is essential that the Placement Plan is developed in partnership with the child (where appropriate), you and the parent as well as the social worker to ensure that the contribution required of all parties for the success of the placement is clearly recorded.

The purpose of the Placement Plan is to set out in detail how the placement is intended to contribute to meeting the child's needs as set out in the Care Plan. The Placement Plan will document how on a day to day basis the child will be cared for and how the child's welfare will be safeguarded and promoted by the appropriate person. The Placement Plan forms part of the overarching Care Plan.

The Placement Plan covers:

  • Purpose of the placement
  • Any agreements about health or educational needs
  • The child's personal history
  • The child's likes and dislikes
  • The rules of the placement, including how the child should behave
  • Agreements for contact between the child/young person and their family
  • When social work visits to the child and yourself will happen and any review meetings

The Children's Guide

The child/young person should receive the Children's promise when they start a placement. This guide will help them understand about foster care and provide information that may be important to them. It will tell them about their rights and how they can contact people such as their Independent Reviewing Officer or Ofsted if they wish to raise a concern.

You should go through the guide with the child or young person in a language that they understand.

If the child needs the Children's Promise in another format, such as another language or Makaton, this needs to be discussed with the child's social worker and the supervising social worker and a copy provided in the required format.

Standards and regulations

Fostering Services National Minimum Standards (England) 2011

The Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011

Training, Support and Development Standards for Foster Care:

Next : Compliance with DBS statutory checks and training
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