What your supervising social worker will do

• Keep in frequent touch with you, your family and children or young people in placement through regular visits and telephone calls.
• Arrange for any additional support services needed.
• Support you with attending meetings, writing reports, keeping records etc.
• Support you and help you to manage contact between the child/children and their birth relatives.
• Identify foster carer training needs and help you to achieve your learning and development objectives.
• Keep careful records of the progress of children placed with you.
• Make all the necessary statutory visits.

Your social worker may be the same person who worked with you during your assessment to become a foster carer. Or it might be someone new.

Your social worker works alongside the child's social worker. They'll work with you to match a child with your terms of approval and fit with you and your family.

These social workers will keep in touch with the children/young person placed with you throughout their placement. They make statutory visits, and care planning decisions with and for them.

Annual foster carer review

After your first year as a foster carer, your social worker will carry out an annual foster carer review. We continue these reviews on an annual basis from then on.

The review is presented to the fostering panel to look at how your first year has been. This process is part of the Fostering Services Regulations.

The annual review is a chance to change your approval status. You may decide you can increase the number of children you foster or you may choose a different fostering scheme. You can give feedback to the panel, both positive and negative, about your year in fostering.