Common Standards For All Foster Carers, NVQ Level 3

The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) has recently announced that all Foster Carers must receive relevant induction, training and support, together with continuing professional development.

Specific standards have been developed for Foster Carers and all foster carers will be required to work towards these standards starting in October 2008.

The main aims of these standards are to equip Foster Carers with the knowledge and skills needed to provide high quality care for the children and young people they look after and ensure that all Foster Carers are given the necessary help to develop knowledge and skills to carry out their job as Foster Carers and appropriate opportunities for career development.

They are mandatory for all Foster Carers both new and existing, each adult in the house must complete the award and new carers must complete within 12 months of approval.

The training framework within Regional Foster Placements will be as follows:

Delivering the Common Induction Standards

This will be carried out via 3 workshops that will be run twice a year by Karen Richards and Jeremy Wills. They will start running from October 2008 to January 2009 and April 2009 to July 2009 and so on…….. They will be run in 4 different geographical areas: Okehampton, Barnstaple, Truro and Gloucester, running from 10.30am to 2.30pm to cover all 7 standards over the 3 sessions, using workbooks with Karen and Jeremy providing guidance and support.

Once the workbooks have been completed, the supervising social worker will check the understanding and sign off each standard in the workbook via supervision meetings and when this has been verified, issue the CWDC Certificate of Successful Completion.

Each Foster Carer will be receiving a personal letter giving them further information.

NVQ Level 3

Part of the training framework is for Foster Carers to move on to the Children & Young People Level 3 NVQ award. Intake onto this programme will be in February of each year and to support the Foster Carers through the award there will be a programme of workshops to match the 8 units of competence run by Karen and Jeremy.

Again, these will run from10.30am to 2.30pm in the four geographical areas i.e. Okehampton, Barnstaple, Truro and Gloucester, with one per month February – September (not including August) and are designed to mainly to cover the knowledge and understanding requirements.

This is an exciting programme of development support for Foster Carers and together with the usual skills courses provided by the company, offers a wonderful opportunity to gain nationally recognised qualifications as well as fulfilling legislative requirements.