Application and Assessment Process
The length of the assessment process is usually around 6 months. However, this may vary, depending upon the complexity of your personal circumstances and the speed with which checks and references are received. Every effort is made to ensure that there is no avoidable delay in the application and assessment process.
1. Request Information
We will requests basic information about you before sending you our information pack.
2. Home Visit
A member of the fostering team will visit your home to discuss fostering with you in greater depth. The worker will put together an initial report based on your discussions, which will recommend whether or not you will be invited to our information evenings.
3. Information Evening
This will give you an opportunity to engage with established carers as well as gaining additional insight into the role of fostering.
4. Skills to Foster Training
This training is where you will receive more information about fostering, with a current Foster Carers assisting social work staff to run the group. It will allow you to share your experiences, and hearing more about the needs of children who have been received into accommodation should build on your current parenting and communication skills. This will help to prepare you to look after a child who has been received into care, and help you understand how this may differ from raising your own child.
5. Application Form
Through completing this application form, you are supplying detailed information about you and your family and giving your consent for us to complete necessary checks and enquiries to determine your suitability to foster.
6. Checks
Aberdeen Council is a registered adoption and fostering agency. One of the things this means is that we must carry out various statutory checks on people who apply to be foster carers as caring for someone else's child is a big responsibility, both for carers and the Council. These checks are repeated as people's circumstances can change.
7. Assessment Process
- A qualified Social Worker carries out a full assessment. He/she visits your home, generally on 6-8 occasions, to meet and collect information about all members of your household and your experience and skills in relation to fostering. The information obtained forms the basis of an assessment report. FCA uses the 'Form F' format – published by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF).
- During the assessment process, applicants will be helped to compile a portfolio of written material giving examples of their relevant experience and skills.
8. Fostering Panel
The content of the Form F assessment report, excluding all references, will be shared with you and then presented to a Fostering Panel. To assist in the decision-making process, applicants are expected to attend the Panel meeting.
Applicants are informed verbally and in writing about the agency decision and if you are approved to become a carer you will be continuously monitored and supported through the Foster Carer Review process.
- "Being in foster care made me feel better about my own family as I realised even loving families have their problems." - Young person
- "Nothing can prepare you for the moment that the first child walks through the door." - Aberdeen carer
Back to the Fostering home page.