Therapeutic fostering is about supporting children and young people in care to heal and grow after experiencing difficult times. It focuses on understanding their feelings, behaviours, and the challenges they’ve faced. At Changing Futures Fostering, we believe every child deserves to feel safe, valued, and like they belong.
Our Changing Futures through Fostering programme is designed to give foster parents the tools they need to care for children in a therapeutic way. Created with help from foster parents and young people who have been in care, this training covers topics like staying calm under stress, managing tough situations, and helping children feel secure. It’s about being there for children, even when things get hard, so they can learn to trust, grow, and feel at home.
Understanding the impact of attachment experiences both for children fostered and their foster parents.
Paying attention to relationships involved in the fostering home and the impact of fostering on significant relationships.
Mentalizing is a form of imaginative mental activity, namely, perceiving and interpreting human behaviour of yourself and others. It is a key approach in our fostering training and helps foster parents build up their skillset around thinking and acting in high pressure stressful situations.
Training involved in understanding child development and the impact of trauma and abuse on children’s development.
Our agency was founded by a relationship-focused charity That expertise means we keep relationships at the forefront of all the training. We will be mindful of all the relationships in the fostering household.
Learning is a process and it doesn’t end with training. In fact, really that’s just the start! If you foster with us, you’ll come to monthly group meetings with other foster parents supported by our team with future training sessions available to our foster parents throughout the year.
What will I Learn?
We’ll equip you with practical, real-world tools and techniques through ten engaging training sessions. Our training explains the “why” and “how” behind each approach in clear, jargon-free language, so you’ll feel confident using them in everyday situations. While covering essential topics like first aid, fire safety, and child development, we go beyond the basics. We also delve into areas like mentalization and therapeutic parenting, giving you a deeper understanding of the children in your care. To make things easier, our training is flexible, with a mix of online and in-person sessions scheduled at convenient times to fit around your commitments.
Training that Builds Understanding
Our training program focuses on fostering sensitive and attuned care, helping children in foster care develop a strong sense of belonging within their new family and supporting their overall development.
Understanding the different behaviours of children who have experienced trauma is crucial, and we’ll provide the right level of training and support tailored to each fostering household. This personalised support is key to creating stable and successful placements.
In this video, you can hear directly from Sally, our training consultant, about what to expect from our programme and why we believe it will make a real difference for you and the children in your care.
We have designed our training in line with our values and beliefs.
I was blown away by the therapeutic training programme at Changing Futures. It was really enlightening and fascinating to learn all of the different techniques I will used during my fostering experience. The training made me feel very prepared for the journey ahead!
- Jane, Foster Parent
