 Job Location: Gloucester Contract Length: 12 Months with possibility to go permanent Pay scale: £19,300 to £22,500 Hours: Full-time - 37.5 hours per week Closing date: 16th Jan 2023 Main Duties and Responsibilities
 Job Location: Worle (with the expectation to travel throughout North Somerset) Salary: £12-14 per hour Hours: Sessional What would you need to do?
As a Family Group Conference (FGC) Co-ordinator at Community Family Care you will be driven to promote the child or young person’s voice and enable them to thrive through delivering high quality family group conferences. You will do this by using best practice to bring family members and friends together to look at how they can collectively provide safe, supportive, and sustainable solutions to the problems being experienced in caring for children within the family. What we need from you?
Please see full job description and email your CV to [email protected] in the first instance. An application form can also be downloaded frpm the link below. Closing date: this is a rolling recruitment and will close when the right person is appointed. Full details and application documents here  Dawn and Gary have been married for 32 years and fostering for seven of those. They have one birth son, Simon, 30, who is married with four children. Family are a huge part of Dawn and Gary’s lives and while their much-loved grandchildren “unfortunately don’t live here”, the family get together often and remain very close. Dawn shares, “Si was an only child and we always wanted lots of children, it just didn’t happen but when Simon was growing up, even though he was an only child, I don’t think I ever cooked for less than six kids at night, especially when he was a teenager – When he went in the marines my husband, Gary, had to say, ‘Stop buying so much food! They’re not all coming every night, he’s left home!’ So, we always had a house full and we think it’s important siblings stay together – I mean we’re grandparents to four and if anyone split them, oh wow, it would be devastating. We had three little [foster] girls and they’d split them and it was awful, it was dreadful.” Dawn was a baker for 35 years and still loves baking (the CFC Cumbria office can attest to her fantastic skills!) Gary worked in the Kangol hat factory until their close and so, due to his love of fell and road running, he re-trained and now works as a self-employed fitness trainer.  “My experience of growing up was wonderful” says Dawn, who was the youngest of four, with an 11-20 year age gap between her siblings and so, grew up much like an only child.
“I had a wonderful childhood, memories of me mam learning me to knit and sew and embroider and bake. Memories of dad in the shed – always in the shed – making things and the smell of wood.” Both Dawn and Gary share the responsibility of fostering, with Dawn attending lots of the meetings and covering admin and Gary spending lots of time with the children when they’re not at school. Dawn says, “We couldn’t do it without each other.” On asking how their experience of fostering siblings has been, Dawn says, “Great. Much easier than fostering solo placements – in all the years of fostering we’ve only had two solo placements – fostering siblings is so much easier because they come together and they support each other. It’s hard – I can’t imagine – being a foster child, you see their faces when they come in and they don’t know you and they come into a strange house but if they’ve got each other, they cope better.” “Ours were both 9/10 when we got them and they both left other siblings, they all went separate places and that’s hard.” “When you’ve got siblings - the oldest one has nearly always been the primary carer – to get them to trust you and give that responsibility over to you so that they can be a child is amazing, it’s just lovely.” Speaking of a sibling group of two, Dawn shares, “The oldest gave me control the same night [they arrived]. Her sister knocked on her bedroom door and I said to her ‘You don’t have to knock on your sister, just knock on us if you need anything in the night, we’ll look after you’ and her sister said, ‘There you go, you don’t have to knock on me anymore because Dawn and Gary are gonna look after us both’ – I was in bed crying!” “But three girls we had [before], it took the oldest one quite a while to hand over the responsibility, it took a couple of months – when they do it’s amazing. They just need to be children, doesn’t matter whether they’re 2 or 13, they still need to be kids and have their own life instead of looking after other people.” “We love watching them learning to play together – most of them don’t know how to play because they’ve never been in an environment where they felt safe enough to play. Interacting together – there are so many positives but they’re my biggest ones.” When asked what had been challenging while fostering, Dawn says, “Because we only had one [birth child] and only ever had friends here, friends don’t fight like siblings do and they literally fight! We had one little boy – I was on the phone, and he hit his sister so hard – and I just put the phone down and I said, ‘What are you doing?!’ and he said ‘Well she was annoying me’ – she wasn’t! She wasn’t doing anything but that was what he’d been brought up with, he’d seen people hitting his mam and he thought it was acceptable - that was challenging.” “When one attaches to us and the other one doesn’t because their loyalties are still with parents, that’s hard because it kind of causes a divide between them. The one who’s attached is like ‘Well I don’t know why you don’t love it here, it’s lovely’ and the other one is like ‘Yeah but we’re not with mam and dad’ and that’s quite challenging, actually.” On asking Dawn what keeps the two of them going during the hard times, she says “We couldn’t do it without each other. The first placement we got was two sibling boys and the oldest one was on the autistic spectrum, and I’d never ever dealt with it” Dawn felt out of her depth, especially given it was their very first experience of fostering, but the boys’ social worker reassured her that it would be fine as he went to a [mainstream] and participated as all the other children did. As it turned out, the boy did attend [mainstream] school, but he was in the special learning unit and Dawn found his extra needs very challenging to deal with. “I phoned Sue [a veteran foster carer] so many times – her and Gary, if it hadn’t been for them two, I would have packed in, I’d have stopped fostering after six weeks because it was so much of a shock. I suppose if you’ve got an autistic child, you know their traits from birth, you know their quirks and things that trigger them – I was like a fish out of water, I kept saying to Gary, ‘I just know how to bake, that’s all I know how to do’ and he said ‘No you don’t! You know how to mother’ We sat up the fell one day and I was absolutely in tears, and he said, ‘We’ll get through this, we will.’” “Our support network’s really good – Simon’s wife, her grandparents ran a children’s home in London so she’s really wonderful – she’s got loads of stories. One of my children wouldn’t eat and that’s a big trigger for me and I rang Bec and said ‘Oh my God, you need to ring your grandma and ask her, and her grandma said, ‘If he wants jam sandwiches, give him jam sandwiches. Just don’t think you’ve got to give them dinner and pudding – they’ve not had it, so it’ll just freak them out. If that’s what he wants to eat for the next month that’s fine!’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s not getting any nutrition from what he’s eating’ and she said ‘It’s fine! Give him plenty of fluids, give him what he wants to eat, even if you think it’s rubbish, you’ll get through it’ and we did!” “If it’s more serious, we just ring CFC, you know there’s always someone at the end of the phone – it just makes you feel better, knowing that you’re not the only one going through what you’re going through.” When asked what she would say to anyone thinking about fostering, Dawn says, “Do it, just do it – that’s what my son told me. We were going to foster when Simon was about eight and we went quite a way through the process and it was at a time when the families had to come to your house for contact and I said, ‘No, I can’t do that when I’ve got my own son at home, he’s my priority, I’ve got to keep him safe and I can’t have people coming in my home.’ So we just stopped and then when he went in the marines, I got proper empty nest syndrome. When he got married and had [their first child] – we talked about it again and we kind of felt guilty when they were expecting because we thought ‘What if they think we’re pushing them away?’ So, I rang him and I said, ‘Listen, me and dad are thinking about fostering’ and he said, ‘I’m actually sick of you thinking about it, I’m sick of this conversation’ he said, ‘You would turn around and say to me ‘Just do it!’ and then if you’re no good at it or you don’t like it, you’ve tried.’ So that’s what I’d say to everybody really, you don’t know unless you’ve tried and the difference you make is amazing. When you look back at photographs from when they first came to when they leave – you don’t see it when you live with it every day because it’s just a process – it’s just a journey but when you see the end result, it’s just amazing. Don’t hesitate to try because that’s all we can do, is try and I’d always say, siblings are the easiest to foster, in my opinion.” We asked Dawn if she felt there was anything in particular that helps them with their fostering and she says, “We put our success down to where we live – we’ve lived in our village forever – we know everyone, we have really good links with both schools. We know if the children go out they’re safe because everybody knows us – and where we live, as regards to the lakes and the fells and the beach – so the kids love that. Most of our children have been local, fairly local, and they’ve never seen them, never been to the beach, never walked up a fell, never been to a lake and they love it. When they go outside, it’s like freedom. It was actually our little boy who was autistic – we were sitting down at [the lake] – and he said ‘Oh this is so peaceful because you don’t have to think, you can just sit and watch the ducks and the swans’ – they love running around in the open spaces and getting in the lake, even in the winter! They go to the beach, and we’ll say, ‘We’re not getting in the beach today, guys, because it’s November!’ and they always end up in the beach and you always need to pack a towel! It's the freedom – where we live, and the community we’ve got around us.” “It’s essential to make them part of your family, include them in everything” One child Dawn and Gary fostered asked their son, “Si - will you be our big brother?” and Simon said, “Oh no problem, I’ll be your big brother” According to Simon’s wife, he got in the car, and had to pull in round the corner because he couldn’t drive for crying. When the family visited a few weeks later, Dawn tells us, “[Simon] kept saying, ‘This is my sister’ to anyone who asked, and her smile just got bigger and bigger and bigger.” We asked Dawn what she and Gary take from fostering - “I personally love hugs and cuddles and sitting and watching Disney movies and hot chocolate and all those nurturing kind of things. We both love watching them thrive, seeing the difference, achieving at school, making friends – that’s what we personally enjoy, both of us.” When considering fostering brothers and sisters, we wanted to know what the two of them notice their young people take from remaining with their siblings - “They keep their roots and the security, that they’ve got each other – they’re still sisters, or sister and brother or brothers, they’ve still got their identity as a family, but we also really make an effort with birth families. We always buy them presents and make a fuss of birthdays. They like to know they’re safe and looked after.” There was a serious incident at school recently to which Dawn went straight down to the school to pick up M and on picking her up, M said, “It was such a shock but when I knew you were just dropping everything and coming for me, I just thought ‘she always comes.’” Dawn says, “It’s just so nice, nice to feel safe and feel loved and feel wanted. [One of our children] was doing an exam and [they] walked out, [they] got upset, it overwhelmed [them], and I said ‘We don’t care if you pass or fail, we’re not bothered, as long as you do your best, that’s all you can do in life, is your best. Don’t ever worry that you haven’t been good enough because you’re always good enough if you’re doing your best.’ It’s things like that that make them feel safe - Keep them safe, make them feel loved and wanted and part of your family.” Fostering siblings inevitably brings extra practicalities into consideration, especially given young people must have their own rooms, which can pose a problem for many foster families but Dawn and Gary fortunately didn’t have any worries, “We didn’t have to think about any practicalities - Even though we had an only child, he was never an only child we always had all his mates sleeping over – we always had a house full; it was just the same really.” We asked Dawn if they had any worries ahead of their first sibling placement. Dawn says, “I think you have worries for every placement – will they like you? Will they settle? Will they like your house? Will they like your food? Will they relax? And I think you do that for every placement, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your first one or your last – you worry that you’re gonna get it right.” On asking if they’d been shocked by anything while fostering, Dawn says, “One of our [children] weed in the corner and then just carried on playing and thought it was perfectly normal – one [child] took my Sellotape and in the middle of the night I heard this strange noise and they’d bound their legs together – really tight. Some of them don’t know how to eat at a table.” “Most of our foster children have been affected by contact a lot. So what we do, in the summer we go to the beck – every time after contact and sometimes we take a picnic, sometimes we get sausage and chips and we sit and throw stones in the beck because we found, with all of them, that when they go to bed after contact, their memory is what’s happened in contact - and if you do that, if you distract them – in the winter we get the paints out on the table and we all paint pictures or we watch Disney movies snuggled up under the duvet with hot chocolate and biscuits – that’s the memory they’re taking to bed, not contact – distraction is a wonderful way to deal with things with them – otherwise, some of them have really bad nightmares. We’ve found with siblings and contact, one of them enjoys it and the other won’t.” When we asked how fostering siblings differs to solo placements, Dawn says, “It seems to be, they settle easier if they’re together. Solo placements – it’s much harder for them.” Dawn shares the reason they chose to foster with a not-for-profit fostering agency rather than local authority or other independent fostering agencies; “We liked that they were like a family – We like that if they’re having a day out, we can take our grandchildren as well and then we’re all a family together and really, that they’re not-for-profit, that they’re charity based. We had to ask, what, specifically, did Dawn and Gary like about fostering with Community Foster Care; “We like that there’s always someone at the end of the phone – and also, if you are having a crisis, they ring you back to check how things are going and if things have settled down. I like our support groups and we can all chat about what’s happening with our children and it’s a safe environment and you know it’s not going to be repeated and usually if you’re having a problem, someone else in the group has dealt with that problem before and can give you tips – that’s really nice.” Source: www.communityfostercare.co.uk Member Job Opportunity: Community Foster Care - Business Support Officer (Placements & Finance)10/12/2022
 Job Location: Gloucester Pay scale: £19,300 to £22,500 Hours: Full-time - 37.5 hours per week Closing date: 31st Jan 2023 Main Duties and Responsibilities
To run the organisation’s placement and referral management process
Please see full role description and email your application form to [email protected] in the first instance. Full details and application documents here Member News: Community Foster Care - We weren’t ready for the John Lewis Christmas advert!17/11/2022
 The John Lewis skateboarding foster dad has had us weeping all morning, since the release of their hotly anticipated annual Christmas advert earlier today.
The John Lewis Christmas advert is very much a British institution at this point, so it’s always exciting when it first drops but we truly weren’t ready for this sweet fostering storyline. We won’t outline the plot, since you’ve probably ‘watched it about five times’ (to quote our Supervising Social Worker, Julia) but we just wanted to add our 2 cents in thanking the team at John Lewis for running a national campaign based around a foster care story. This kind of exposure, highlighting both the real life plight for children in care and the staggering numbers of looked after children in the UK will, undoubtedly, raise awareness and hopefully see an increase in much needed new foster families in coming forward. We also wanted to shout out our Fairer Fostering Partnership buddies, Action for Children, in partnering on the campaign - a big well done to the team. If you’re the type of person who loves helping others, goes that extra mile and have the space in your heart and home to take in a foster child/children we would love to hear from you (we promise you don’t have to learn how to skateboard!) Have you been inspired by the John Lewis Christmas ad? If you would like to know more about becoming a foster parent, take a look at our free information pack. Source: www.communityfostercare.co.uk  We love to share positive fostering stories, so let us tell you about Casey… Casey, is a former foster child and now an independent young person. She lived with her CFC foster family for the last five years of childhood before ageing out of care. Casey has come up with an initiative that aims to provide foster children and young people coming into care and joining a new foster family, a welcome gift box containing all the essentials and a little note from her. Casey has been in the foster care system since she was very little. Being split from her mum and not knowing her siblings, she has faced a lot of adversity, instability and challenge and she continues to deal with the effects of developmental and relational trauma. In her time with Community Foster Care, Casey has been actively engaged with our charity and continues to work with us in any way she can in order to help other young people going through similar experiences. We wanted to shout about this latest positive story surrounding Casey and so we sat down with her to find out her motivation for this initiative. She bravely shares the painful memories of arriving at new foster homes with just a plastic bin bag holding her small amount of possessions. She tells of how those experiences left her with feelings of being unwanted and not belonging and how if she can provide any small comfort to other children feeling the same, that's what she's going to do. These welcome boxes are to let those children and young people know that there are people out there who understand what they're going through, that there are people who care and that there are more positive times coming.  We are so proud of Casey for how far she has come and continues to go, how much self awareness she has and her selfless pursuit of helping others. As a fostering charity with a strong therapeutic approach, we know how important it is to cultivate lifelong links for young people but we also recognise that the adversity young people in care face, means they are far more vulnerable than those not living in care or coming out of foster care. Maintaining positive links can be very difficult for care experienced young people, so to continue growing that relationship with Casey is a real pleasure for the organisation and something we are very proud of. We hope you enjoy this little snippet of her story.
Source: www.communityfostercare.co.uk Member News: Community Foster Care - Re-write Normal - Our New Fostering Recruitment Campaign29/9/2022
 “It was normal to cry every single day, it was normal to scream and shout at each other, it was normal to punch each other in the face, d’you know what I mean?”  This week we are proudly launching our latest fostering recruitment campaign: Re-write Normal where we are asking people thinking about fostering, could you re-write what normal looks like for a child or young person in foster care? Could you make ‘normal’ look like kindness, patience, stability, consistency and love? Our campaign follows the true story of Leigh* who has been in and out of foster care for most of her life. Leigh reflects on what ‘normal’ life looked like for her when she was in the care of her mum as a small child. She considers how her life might have been had she not come into care. “There’s things that - now I’m like ‘That’s not normal, that’s not okay’ but if I’d been through that throughout my life, I wouldn’t have known no different.” — Leigh Fostering can be a real challenge for foster parents because the reality, often, is that they’re caring for children and young people who have suffered a great amount of trauma in their lives. We wanted to share the truth of what this can look like, so when Leigh came to us wanting to share her story, we felt it would be a great fit for a campaign. We sat down with Leigh to hear her story in her own words and in doing so, the name and theme of the campaign came into fruition organically. “Growing up was very difficult for me. I had some very difficult trauma, difficult life experiences… it was normal for my mum’s partner to just walk in the house, start crashing things, start smashing things, getting really abusive towards my mum - that was normal.” — Leigh To hear Leigh’s words and read more about our Re-write Normal campaign, click the button below.   Job Location: Flexible Pay scale: Voluntary - Expenses only Hours: Six meetings per year (3 Board / 3 subgroup) Role Summary
Community Foster Care’s (CFC) trustees are essential in ensuring that we can continue to strive towards our mission. As a trustee you will ensure that CFC remains on course with delivering its key activities. At CFC we are committed to creating a culture driven by our values and based on diversity, exploration, critical reflection, courage to challenge and belief in the power of people. Trustees have the overall legal responsibility for a charity. The law describes charity trustees as ‘the persons having the general control and management of the administration of a charity’ (Charities Act 2011, section 177). Charity trustees are those responsible under the charity's governing document for controlling the administration and management of the charity. This is the case regardless of the terminology used to describe the role. For CFC, the charity trustees are the board of trustees. The Role of the Board At its simplest, the role of the board of trustees is to ensure all of CFC’s assets are safeguarded and applied to the charitable purposes of CFC. The board of trustees must always act in the best interests of CFC, exercising the same standard of duty of care that a prudent person would apply if looking after the affairs of someone for whom they have responsibility. The trustee board must act as a group and not as individuals. Key requirements of which you should be aware Trustees are expected to attend an induction session with CFC prior to their first board meeting. Trustees are expected to attend all board meetings. Board meetings are held three times a year, usually in the late afternoon – early evening. The meetings tend to be held at our Kingsholm Office in Gloucester, but participants can attend via remote video call. From time to time there are additional meetings and planning sessions.
Main Duties and Responsibilities The duties of a trustee board member are to:
In addition to the above statutory duties, each trustee should use any specific skills, knowledge or experience they have, to help the board of trustees reach sound decisions. This may involve leading discussions, identifying key issues, providing advice and guidance on new initiatives, and evaluating or offering advice on other areas in which the trustee has particular expertise. What we require from all our employees and volunteers:
Community Foster Care is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children; applicants must be willing to undergo child protection screening appropriate to the post, including checks with past employers and the Disclosure and Barring Service clearance at enhanced level. CVs will not be accepted in any circumstances; all applicants must complete an application form. Person Specification Each trustee must have:
Further details here  Job Location: Bradford on Avon Salary: £29,751.41 - £32,097.40 (FTE) dependent on experience Hours: 7.5 hours per week. There is flexibility in when these hours could be worked but you would ideally have a presence on a Tuesday Closing Date for Applications - 5pm on 27th May 2022 We are searching for new talented, inspired people to join our crew. As a small community focused Charity, exciting things are happening, and we’re looking for new crew members to join our expedition. We’re propelled by our values and our belief to explore new ways to realise young people’s potential and achieve our mission.
What would you need to do?
What do we need from you?
Interested? For more information, download the job Description, below or contact us on 01452 840 999. To apply, please download and complete an application form and securely email it to [email protected] no later than 5pm on Friday 27th May 2022 Full details and application documents here  Job Location: Lancaster Salary: £22,873.40 - £26,339.07 (FTE) dependent on experience Hours: 18.75 hours per week. Option for flexible working patterns across the week. Closing Date: - 5pm on 25th May 2022 We are looking for a Placement and Family Support Worker to work with children, young people and families to overcome challenges and adversity, enabling them to reach their potential. You will develop and call on a range of creative techniques and interventions that enable Children and Young People to thrive. From this secure confident position, we will enable them to take the next positive step. You will ensure we can evidence this progress.
What would you need to do?
What do we need from you?
Interested? Download the Job Description or contact Rae Edwards on 01452 849301 for more information. To apply please download and complete an application form and securely email it to [email protected] no later than 5pm on Wednesday 25th May 2022 Full details and application documents here |
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c/o TACT Fostering Innovation House PO Box 137 Blyth NE24 9FJ |