Will I be expected to foster sibling groups?

It’s really important to understand that once you’ve been approved as a Five Rivers foster carer, you’ll never be required to take on a placement that you are not fully comfortable with. We know that to be the best foster carer you can be, you need to be happy and confident in your ability to look after and support the child or young person placed in your care. And this means, you need to be comfortable that you can meet their individual needs and requirements.

We know that for some prospective foster carers, they might be put off from enquiring if they believe there will be an expectation to foster sibling groups or multiple children. We want to reassure you that this is most definitely not the case even though there is a high level of need for sibling groups to be placed together in families. While we welcome enquiries from prospective carers keen to foster sibling groups and multiple children, we always need foster carers who are happy to care for individual children.

During the fostering assessment, your assessing social worker will talk to you about your preferred and most suited type of placement; whether this is foster care for children and young people of all ages and needs or Parent and Child. Your social worker will assess your personal circumstances and relevant skills and work with you to establish what type of foster care you’ll be best suited to. This isn’t to say you can’t change your mind further down the line, and your approval as a foster carer can be reviewed to allow you to take on a wider range of placements.

We have a number of foster carers who have two different types of placement running alongside each other at the same time. So, if you do have the bedrooms and space to take on multiple children or a parent and child, it’s worth bearing in mind that you could do this providing you and your social worker feel confident that this can be done safely for all concerned. For newly approved foster carers, we tend to ease them in to the process with only one child and then go from there. It is a learning curve and there are certain additional pressures that come from fostering multiple children.

It’s always worth talking through any questions you may have about fostering to find out all you can about your options and the requirements. Our foster carer recruitment team are on hand to answer any questions and chat to you about the fostering process with Five Rivers. You can also check out our Frequently Asked Questions to see if you can find any helpful information there.

To book a call with our foster carer recruitment team, click here.