Cheshire West and Chester Council are looking to recruit skilled and experienced foster carers who have worked with adolescents to join our Specialist Foster Carer scheme. The scheme aims to enable young people to step down from residential care and move to a family environment that can continue to meet their needs. Carers within the scheme will be part of a wraparound professional support team composing of a social worker, teacher, therapist and family support worker.
For more information about our support package, please visit and .
To complete an Expression of Interest please email or call Foster directly on .
Contract and Pay
To reflect the skills required to care for our children and adolescents, you will be paid a professional fee of £, per annum
A fostering allowance will be provided to cover other fostering expenses mileage, Christmas and Birthday money
Regular short stays will be offered to the young person to enable a break for foster carers
Key requirements
You will need to:
Successfully complete a foster carer assessment and approval by Cheshire West and Chester Council
Be available on a full-time basis to care for the young person placed
Have room to support a child or adolescent in your home
Be able to offer a home to a solo child
Be willing to ‘stick with’ and provide a durable relationship and offer stability
Like and relate to young people with complex and troubled backgrounds
Be committed to providing life enhancing opportunities and life skills to the child or adolescent
Live in the Cheshire West and Chester area or close by
Be able to demonstrate a caring attitude that is child centred and relational
Be able to offer unconditional positive regard and encouragement to a young person, even whilst challenging unacceptable behaviour if needed
Support when a young person is not engaging in/attending education, training and employment
Be a car driver, with a vehicle suitable to be used for fostering activities
Be able to fulfil successful DBS check
Be able to complete mandatory training requirements
Be able to support children and young people with family contact
Personal Characteristics
Characteristics beneficial to the role include:
Patience
Child centred
Therapeutic
Emotionally resilient
Physically resilient
Persistent
Active
Flexible
Interested
Positive
Resilient family/networks
Robust
Empathetic
Good communicator
Key experience
You will be expected to:
Demonstrate experience of working with children and adolescents with complex backgrounds
Understand the impact of trauma, attachment and neglect on children and adolescents
Engage as part of the wider professional team involved in the scheme to create child-centred care and support
Uphold professional fostering standards, including high quality recording and reporting
Understand child development and effects on life experience
Work therapeutically with children and adolescents in line with ‘our way of working’ model
Examples of professions
Previous professions suited to role include:
Residential Worker
Police Officer
Teachers
Probation Worker
Psychiatric Nurse
Specialist Foster Carer
Foster carer with additional experience of complex and challenging behaviour
Ex Staying Put Carers
Support
Support you will receive from the Fostering Team includes:
Regular Supervision
Carers will be afforded a standard skills and training package as well as a suite of training tailored to their needs. This aims to support carer professional development and to address the need of any young person they have in their care
Regular liaison, joint working and support from the wider scheme team including a teacher, therapist, family support worker and social worker
Assessments of each young person’s support needs and development of support plans
