Homestudy
Following on from the preparation and training group you will be required to co-operate in a 'home study'. This is when a Social Worker will visit you and your family home to assess both you and your family's suitability to foster. The home study will include looking at the skills and experience you already have as well as areas that may need further development and support. During this time a series of checks will be completed on you and the adults aged 16 and over in your home.
During the home study social work staff will discuss your application to foster with your own children. It is sometimes said that it is families, not adults who foster. It is certainly true that if you are accepted as a foster carer then children and young people placed with you will have an impact on everyone in your household - including your own children. It is important that you chat with your children at an early stage, and check out how they feel about being part of a family that fosters.
Sometimes it may be that following these discussions you decide to put an application on hold for a couple of years. Sometimes it may simply mean that any child who you foster needs to be in a specific age and/or sex category that minimises there impact upon your own children. Together with social work staff you will be asked to consider these issues with a decision being reached in the end that is for everyone's benefit.