What is Resilience Foster Care (RFC)?
Who is Resilience Foster Care aimed at ?
This scheme is targeted at applicants with previous experience as foster carer, or have experience caring for children or young people, or have background in childcare, youth work, social care, teaching, probation, police etc. The applicants must:
- Be over 21 years and have a spare room.
- Have no child under the age of 15 living in the household.
- Be available on a full time basis. If you are applying as a couple, then one of applicant must be available full time.
- Have access to a car and be prepared to transport children to and from school, contact and all appointments.
- Is expected to take the placements matched with them at any time as part of the matching process and in the discussions with the RFC team of SSW, FSW and therapist. The only exception to this, are compelling reasons like illness, change in personal circumstance (crises) or a conflict of interest
- Be prepared to attend regular supervision visit sessions, professional meetings, and provide care in the event that the young person is not in school.
- Be committed to training and development by completing all mandatory and placement led training.
- Have a caring nature, a desire to help young people and an ability to consistently see the positives in a situation.
- Be patient, flexible, resilient and offer a structured and supportive environment, which provides empathy, warmth and understanding. RFCs are expected to be able to adapt and change their approach to meet the evolving needs of children.
- Understand how trauma affects a child’s emotional health and behaviour.
- Can work as part of a team which includes therapists, social workers, youth justice teams and other services.
- Want to learn and develop your skills on therapeutic caregiving.
- Have a positive can do attitude.
Support and Benefit of being a Resilience Foster Carer :
Since this is a therapeutic approach, the applicants will be an active part of the child’s therapy team, with the goal to improve children’s psychological and emotional well-being. As a resilience foster carer, Slough Children First IFA will offer the following support:
- Weekly/fortnightly placement support visits from an allocated family support worker.
- 2 weekly supervision visits from an allocated supervising social worker who will support the RFC and young person pre and post transition and offer support, guidance and advice.
- Monthly multi-disciplinary team around the young person meetings that includes the RFC. The aim of this is to monitor and assess the short and long term care plans and to ensure placement support is proactive and action plans are followed up.
- Extensive training on therapeutic parenting to effectively deal with challenging behaviour, helping the child to process trauma, manage and communicate their emotions more appropriately.
- Regular short breaks through respite with a foster carers or short break carers. This is on a need basis and will be assessed as part of the matching process.
- A dedicated resilience foster carer support group that meets monthly.
- Carefully planned introductions.
- Out of hours phone support 365 days a year from our Fostering Out of Hours Support and Emergency Duty Service
- Earning up to £39,000 per annum, which excludes the child allowance.
- Free membership of the Fostering Network which provides independent advice, legal insurance, tax benefit, financial advice and discounts.
- Paid Mileage, birthday and festival allowance
- Opportunity to continue to professionally develop through SCF tailored training package.
- Buddy support from other carers.
- Successful annual review payment
Payments :
| RFC Fee per week 1 child/sibling group | Child allowance per week per child. |
| £725 – £750 weekly pay when a child is in placement Or Retainer Fee of £400 per week (The payment of this is subject to the conditions) | Age of child/years Weekly payment 0-2 £171 3-4 £177 5-10 £195 11-15 £223 16-17 £260 |
