Our primary aim is to provide safe, secure and appropriately matched foster placements, where children and young people can thrive emotionally, be healthy, attain all necessary skills to achieve in education, participate and contribute positively to society.

To achieve our aims, our objectives are:

To recruit and retain a diverse range of foster carers.

To undertake detailed, timely and robust foster carer assessments, to ensure that we approve competent foster carers who are motivated, enthusiastic and committed.

To provide adequate support to our foster carers through regular supervision, support visits, foster carers’ support group meetings, continuous training and an out of hours ‘on-call’ advice and support service.

To undertake foster carer annual reviews.

To arrange and deliver appropriate and relevant face to face and online training programmes that enable foster carers to develop their skills and knowledge, to best meet the needs of children placed with them.

To have a properly constituted Independent Fostering Panel, to consider assessments and make recommendations to the Agency Decision Maker regarding approval, review, change of terms or termination of approvals.

To have effective systems in place to appropriately match children with vacant foster carers to minimise placement breakdowns.

To achieve the best possible outcomes for children and young people.

To protect the child/young person from any form of abuse, neglect, exploitation, radicalisation or deprivation.

To maintain the skills and knowledge base of staff members, independent staff members, managers and panel members, by providing effective training and staff development programmes.

To maintain secure, separate and accurate records for every child, young person, foster carer and staff member and ensure access to such records in line with legislation, policies and procedures.

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