Training & Development
Caring for foster children is both rewarding and challenging. At Families for Children we believe that there is a common core of skills and knowledge that all foster carers need to work effectively as part of the care team around Glasgow’s care experienced children and young people.
Core Skills describes the abilities and knowledge that all carers are expected to have learned, developed and evidenced through preparation groups and the assessment process.
The core skills also reflect a set of common values that promote equality, respect diversity, and challenge stereotypes. These skills help to improve life chances for all children and young people including those who have disabilities and those who are most vulnerable in line with the eight well-being indicators of “Getting It Right For Every Child”
At Families for Children, we have a dedicated training team of qualified and experienced social work practitioners and educators who are committed to supporting carers to continue to develop their skills and knowledge throughout their fostering career.
Your first opportunity to meet the training team comes during your preparation and assessment. Joan and Elaine and their small team of experienced foster carers and adopters will introduce you to a number of important social work theories and help you to gain an understanding of attachment, secure base, and child development, communicating with children and building resilience. This lays a strong foundation that, in your first year of approval, will support you to go on to explore:
- Understanding Challenging Behaviour
- Life Story
- Supporting Children to Form Healthy Relationships
Following your first year of approval, and after you have had the opportunity to apply your core skills to caring for children and young people, you will have the opportunity to attend Post Approval Training.
The training will cover areas such as:
- Equality and diversity
- Data security
- Record keeping and report writing
- Making a child welcome in your home
- Working with birth families
- Making family contact work
- Protecting children from harm
- Risk Aware Practice
- Developing Safer Caring Family Plans
- Dealing with complaints, practice concerns and allegations
- Health Matters (an audience with our Chief Medical Officer)
- Education and Individual Support Plans
- Working as part of the Corporate Parenting team
- Stress awareness and ‘Mindful’ practice
Learning opportunities are not all in the class room. Each fostering household has a dedicated supervising social worker who will visit you on a monthly basis and offer opportunities, through supervision, to reflect on any learning opportunities that you have had and those that you might wish to access from the Training Calendar We also have a range of support groups that offer the opportunity to meet with other carers to share information, discuss areas of common interest and keep up with developments.
We also encourage carers to enhance their learning by accessing some of the highly evaluated online courses that are available and by following informative websites that regularly update information about internet safety and child protection.
Donna has been a foster carer with FFC for over 7 years. She tells us about the course - Understanding Challenging Behaviour
Donna said: “It’s absolutely fabulous, it will open your eyes; the amount you will learn is just phenomenal.”
“When I came along to Understanding Challenging Behaviour, it basically saved the girls, saved us and saved the placement.”
Ken has been foster carer with FFC for over 8 years. He recently attended Life Stories training
He said: “When I came on board at first and training was mentioned, I thought, I’m nearly 58 years old, I’ve had 2 kids and I’ve had 4 grandkids and I’ve been involved in all their lives; they can’t teach me anything. Boy, was I wrong.”
Christine is a permanent foster carer and has been fostering with FFC for over 5 years.
She recently attended the Talk 2 course
Christine said: “I was surprised how little I knew so the training couldn’t have come at a better time. I would encourage anyone to go to the talk 2 course.”