About the Fostering Service

Find out about our fostering service and what we offer

Fostering is a way of providing a family life to a child unable to live at home. As a West Berkshire foster carer, you'll be part of a team of professionals helping to provide a child with a safe environment.

Although fostering is primarily about you providing a safe place in which a foster child or young person can feel protected and cared for, you will work with others (for example social workers, schools, health professionals) to help them make progress and achieve the best outcomes.

We need foster carers for children of all age groups, and if you decide to apply to foster, we'll help you to decide the age group of the children you want to care for. We'll work with you to ensure the children we place with you match your skills and experience.

What we offer

We guide and support you all the way through the application and assessment process and give you maximum support after you have been approved.

We offer comprehensive training to enable you to make the most of your abilities and skills to help children who may have had distressing experiences. We've got support groups where you can learn from other foster carers and share your own experiences too. Our Fostering Team is with you every step of the way.

We'll support you to use your experience, knowledge and skills (which you may not know you've got!) to understand what's happened in the life of a child in care, how the child feels, what they need and want and how you can help them.

Allowances

In addition, we pay Icon for pdf generous weekly fostering allowances [277KB] when a child or young person is living with you.

Find out more

Fostering can be a challenge, but it's incredibly rewarding! Most children in foster care for any length of time never forget their carers. Don't take our word for it though - you can hear from our foster carers in their own words too.

You can also find out more about being a foster carer on our 'Can I be a Foster Carer?' page.

Request our information pack about fostering in West Berkshire