Member News from Fair Ways Fostering: Foster Care Fortnight 2023 - #FosteringCommunities

What is foster care fortnight? 

Foster care fortnight is  ‘The fostering networks annual campaign to raise the profile of fostering and show how foster care transforms lives’.  The fortnight highlights  the commitment, passion and dedication of foster carers along with everyone else involved in supporting young people in foster care. 

The fortnight also helps to raise awareness of fostering and the need for more foster carers in the UK. With a national shortage of foster carers across the UK, this is now more crucial more than ever. Fair Ways needs foster carers from various backgrounds that can offer children and young people a stable loving home. 

As an experienced charity fostering agency Fair Ways are looking forward to once again celebrating foster care fortnight with our young people, foster carers and fostering team. 

Each year the fostering network pick a theme for the celebration. This year the theme is #FosteringCommunities. 

Why is “communities” such an important theme in fostering? 

Fostering is a community effort, as many people quote “it takes a village to raise a child” and this is just as true in fostering. Fostering is a complex, but rewarding role that requires the support from an array of professionals working together to produce the best outcomes for the young people.  

Members of this community include foster carers, their families, LA social workers, supervising social workers, fostering managers, school’s and support workers along with any other significant person or agency involved in the young person’s life.  

At Fair Ways fostering we are lucky to also offer many pathways through care for our young people via the other Fair Ways services. More importantly a stable continuum of care sometimes starting within Fair Ways residential homes. The residential homes work closely with our fostering team to identify young people who are ready for foster care and work on finding them the very best match from our portfolio of foster care families, gradually transitioning the young person into the family. This has worked so well that 3 years ago Fair Ways set up a residential home specially to enable the transition pf younger children from residential care into fostering, this is now an Outstanding rated service.  

We also provide supported living homes, and our pathway intervention services in Wales. Our young people can also access our specialist schools and get expert therapy without the waiting times of the NHS through our therapeutic Hub. 

This community of people wanting to help our young people flourish into their best-selves results in stable, loving placements that provide a brighter future for our young people. 

Fair Ways are looking forward to celebrating Foster care fortnight and have a range of fun activities planned. We hope that with Local authorities and IFA’s across the UK coming together to show the positive side of fostering and all the good it can do, there will be a real boost to the UK fostering community which will encourage more people to come forward and foster

Source: 
https://www.fairways.co/

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