Fostering Together: A foster care provider specialising in complex disability care

Fostering Together are a specialist community for foster carers who share a common experience of being carers and parents for children with complex disabilities in the care system.

For KtoA Magazine, the team from Fostering Together delve into their specialist service and support for those who want to become foster carers.

Fostering Together is a community created especially for families who foster children with complex disabilities. Since starting up in 2020, we have supported families of young people with wide-ranging conditions, including physical disabilities, learning needs, communication, or sensory impairments, as well as people who are on the autistic spectrum.

We also support some amazing families who foster children with life-limiting conditions requiring palliative care - enabling children to live within family life when the only other option may be a hospital bed or long-term hospice care. Primarily we support children long-term and set up permanent fostering placements, but we can also support children to reunite with biological family or extended family members. At the moment we support families across the South East, East Anglia, and the Midlands, and our community is constantly growing as we meet like-minded passionate families who have been able to foster.

The community is multifaceted, including those who foster children through us, foster carers who provide short stays and breaks, sessional support workers employed to provide direct sessional support to families, and individuals with nursing experience. Those with nursing experience provide mentorship to carers about health, medications, and matters to raise with the health professionals in the wider team around the child.

We meet many foster carers who are registered with other fostering services but are feeling isolated as carers for young people who have additional needs. Therefore, we know how valuable being able to speak to someone else with a shared experience can be.

We use this collective shared experience to provide tailored and bespoke packages of support around each child and family. This includes packages for planned stays for children with other trained foster families, sessional support with local support workers, bespoke and medical-professional-led training for specific medical procedural care, and much more. Families benefit from regular support groups, including meet-ups whilst children are in school, to discuss experiences and shared learning.

Who can foster children with disabilities?

‘‘The main requirements to become a foster carer are often stated as a spare room at home and the time, love, and drive to provide a safe, nurturing home to a child in need.’’

We view prior experience of supporting, caring for, or growing up alongside individuals with disabilities as being an almost essential aspect of the role of fostering children with disabilities - though we are very aware that experience can be evident in many different ways. Navigating services to find accessible options for young people who have disabilities can be overwhelming for new parents and carers. The role of a foster carer includes maintaining diaries of care, various fostering paperwork, additional meetings, ongoing safeguarding and planning, regular social work supervision, and more.

What advice do you have for foster carers who are considering fostering a child with disabilities?

Please do talk to us and/or other fostering providers. There are so many children that require either short-term or long-term care to keep them safe, that no matter who you end up deciding to register with, you will hopefully be able to have an impact. When you do, we always advise asking to speak to someone within that services’ community – we always think that a provider is best represented by its members, and they will give you a comprehensive idea of what being a foster carer is really like!

If you are unsure of whether it might be for you it is always worth the conversation. Many families may also start by providing some short breaks to other local families first before committing to providing longterm care, but in any case, the fostering community are always going to be able to answer far more of your questions!

As part of our mission to support foster carers, we love attending Kidz to Adultz exhibitions. This allows us to meet so many vibrant, like-minded people who have a drive and passion to create an inclusive, accessible, and equal society for people with disabilities. It is always so encouraging to meet people who tell us that they are foster carers themselves and to see the wide-ranging impact. We are set to attend Kidz to Adultz Middle on Thursday 13th March 2025 in Coventry.

Find out more about us at www.fosteringtogether.co.uk