Sunday 01 September 2024
Last updated: Wednesday 13 November 2024
Fostering with a Social Enterprise means you’ll join an organisation that prioritises the wellbeing of children and Foster Carers, and puts purpose before profit.
As a Social Enterprise, we reinvest in our children’s services and the communities we serve. This means we can better support our Foster Carers and the children they look after.
Our Social Enterprise reinvestments help us provide…
Our local, experienced staff offer 24/7 personalised support to our Foster Carers, 365 days a year. We know this round-the-clock support is crucial, and it’s not something other fostering agencies always offer. In addition to this, our Social Workers are therapeutically trained to understand the impact of trauma and adverse childhood experiences. This means they can provide compassionate, trauma-informed support to our foster families.
An important part of our Social Workers’ jobs is advocating for our Foster Carers, ensuring that their voices are heard when times get tough. This involves working closely with our team of in-house Clinicians so that difficulties can be addressed promptly. From there, our Clinicians, Social Workers, and Foster Carers create an agreed plan of support. This personalised therapeutic response, funded by our Social Enterprise reinvestments, is what makes Five Rivers stand out from other fostering agencies.
Our research-based training is unique to Five Rivers Child Care and provides our Foster Carers with a strong foundation in therapeutic care.
Working in partnership with University College London and the Anna Freud Centre, we have carried out studies to understand the impacts of childhood adversity. As a result, we have developed the Attachment and Trauma-Informed Care Model™ (ATIC) – a pioneering model of therapeutic care that we embed across the whole organisation.
Delivered by an in-house team of clinicians, our ATIC training helps Foster Carers to become trauma-informed, enabling them to better support children and minimising the risk of placement breakdown.
When young people leave the care system, they lose the structured support and resources that the foster care system provides. For many young people, this transition is difficult. To help support them, we created Five Rivers Futures—a volunteer-run befriending service, financial grant scheme, information signpost, advocacy support, and leaving care gift package, all rolled into one.
We deliver a national program of fun and educational events, helping our children explore issues that matter to them. Through meaningful, creative activities, the children tackle subjects relating to their care, as well as broader issues that matter to them. Through their creative expression, the children bring about positive change in how we (and others) care for them.
We listen to our children’s feedback and implement their suggestions for improvements. That’s why we have a Youth Council that gathers and shares children’s views with our organisation.
Being a Social Enterprise means we invest in our community and environment, buying locally wherever possible and working with local suppliers. We also ask our suppliers to agree to provide meaningful work placements for care experienced people.
Take the first step to transforming a child or young person’s life today and register your interest with our carer enquiries team to join the Five Rivers family.