As the festive period creeps ever closer, I have started to reflect upon what feelings this provokes.  People chatting in the office about their family’s traditions.  Putting up the tree in our house is a big event, getting everyone involved, and me as the Mum trying to not move the children’s ‘miss placed’ baubles.  Michael Bublé on repeat and watching the tear jerking Christmas TV adverts.  It’s not Christmas in my house though until we see the Coca-Cola advert, which unbelievably as I write this on the 28^th November is still yet to happen! Christmas is also an opportunity where we should think about others and how we can help.

So how do we support our foster carers and the young people in our care?  Every family has an allocated Supervising Social.  We always try where possible for the social worker who carries out your assessment to remain your worker into your fostering journey.   This means we have a good insight into you and your family, helping to ensure that we are able to make the best match for you and the child.

We love to build relationships with all the children that come into Caritas Care.  Getting to know them helps us to learn what their support needs are.  We work closely with our Local Authority colleagues to ensure the right support is in place for them.  This can range from from seeking the therapeutic support, via our Trauma therapist or Therapeutic Intervention Service, Educational support or advice and guidance around helping to develop their social networks.

Caritas Care’s trauma therapist and Intervention service are not only available to our children but to the fostering families ensuring that we provide a wraparound service to all those involved in caring for the children and young people.

It is important that we support our families to develop their knowledge base and therefore all of our carers are offered an extensive training plan to access, in order to help them to feel confident in supporting our children.

We allocate a daily/nightly duty worker who is on hand 24/7 365 – even when we are tucking into our turkey!

Get in touch by completing the contact form opposite or call us on 0800 652 6955.