Fostering in Warwickshire

Fostering Warwickshire

We are happy to share that, as a West Midlands based fostering service (Birmingham), we are an approved Foster Carer provider for Warwickshire County Council (as well as for all local surrounding Local Authorities) which means that when children and young people from the Warwickshire area are in need of Foster homes, The Children’s Services Team will forward us a referral to see what suitable homes we have for that child within the area. As such we work with them closely to ensure we recruit and train the most suitable and well-matched Foster Carers possible.

To give you an idea of the scope of fostering, specific to Warwickshire, please see below localised information that you may find helpful.

How many children are in care in Warwickshire?

It was reported by Warwickshire County Council that in March 2022 that there were 822 looked after children and young people from within the local authority area, of which the vast majority of these (557) were placed in foster homes. This is a slight drop in comparison to the previous year however overall since 2018 there has been an increase of nearly 15%

Warwickshire Childrens Services will always try to keep Warwickshire based Children local (when it is safe an appropriate to do so), as this helps the child to continue with important aspects such as attending school and supervised family time etc, so when we are looking at matching children to potential foster homes from Warwickshire our Foster Carers form this area will always be our first point of call. Additionally, other neighbouring local authorities such as Birmingham or Coventry for example, will sometimes reach out to our Warwickshire based foster carers if they have been unable to find a suitably matched Foster Carer within their own Local Authority.

Why are the children coming into care?

The reasons that children and young people are entering care in Warwiskshire is monitored by the Local Authority. You will see from the details below that this mostly due to dysfunction or acute stress within the child’s birth family and/or abuse and neglect .

During your assessment and training to become a Foster Carer we will provide you training that will allow you to understand what impact this may have had on the children that come into your care, their development, their understanding of boundaries or their ability to trust adults to keep them safe.

About the children that come into care

Children come into care every day of all ages, however we do find that there are certain age groups that have higher numbers, for example; In March 2022 children and young people aged 10-15 years account for the majority of looked after children in Warwickshire (36%), below you can see a rough guide to the ages of children that were in care in the Warwickshire area over the last 5 years.

When you hear us talking about matching, one of the areas that we will always try to match where possible is the ethnic profile of children and their Foster Carers. To give you an idea how this is reflected in Warwickshire please see the below information as reported by Childrens Services. This is important information to know as in order to be able to match effectively, there needs to be a foster carer base that reflects the demographics of the city’s children and young people.
White children and young people make up 75% of the looked after population in Warwickshire, followed by Mixed Heritage children (7%), Asian/Asian British children (4%), Black/Black British children (3%) and children of other ethnic origins accounting for 11%

What Foster Carers are needed in Warwickshire?

There is a real need at the moment to increase the number of foster homes across Warwickshire. As a whole, we need to recruit committed carers across the board for children of all ages, however, there is a clear and evidenced need to recruit additional Carers that are able to offer homes to children aged 10-15 as this is the age category that has the highest number of all fostered children.
We are also dedicated to keeping siblings together, where appropriate, and as such are in need of homes that are able to consider fostering more than one child.

There is also an increasing demand for mother and baby placements and children with complex medical needs and/or life limiting conditions.
Full Training and support is provided to our Carers to ensure that they are able to offer the types of placements they would like and are considered suitable for. Click here to find out more about what different types of foster care placements you could offer to children from in and around Warwickshire. Alternatively contact a member of our team or to request a copy of our fostering brochure