Fostering is a way of providing care, in a family environment, for children while their own families are unable to care for them. There’s more information on fostering and the different kinds of fostering available here.
Foster care takes time, dedication and commitment – it’s rarely an overnight success. There are daily challenges to face with new issues to overcome. That’s why we’re right by your side 24 hours a day, seven days a week with both practical and emotional support
Therapeutic Support
As an agency we encourage foster carers to adopt the P.A.C.E. method & ‘Secure Base Model’ when looking after the children placed with them. We feel it is essential that we develop the skills of our foster carers as they are the primary attachment figures who can bring about positive change in a child and offer a therapeutic environment.
To support them with this we build our training programme around this model and have a qualified therapist available directly to our carers. All our foster carers attend monthly Practice Development Sessions where the emotional impact of fostering is explored. The aim is to ensure placement stability and support carers in nurturing healthy attachments, whilst acknowledging the challenges inherent in being a foster carer. These sessions help our foster carers develop the resilience to provide excellent standards of carer to the children placed with them.
Fitzgerald Agency does a lot to support us – I don’t think that the previous agency that I was with cared about me and my brother.
Children’s Consultation Fitzgerald Fostering