Fife Council fostering team is at the centre of providing high quality foster care for vulnerable children in Fife. We are the third largest foster care provider in Scotland and our experienced team is committed to providing solid support and first-class training, plus other benefits for our foster carers. As well as providing individual support to all our foster carers we aim to match each child or sibling group to each fostering family.
You can foster if you are single, in a relationship, any gender or sexual orientation and have children of your own. You can foster whether you rent or own your own home but you should be over 21 years old to apply.
You will need to have time to care for a child or young person, often on a full-time basis and also have a spare bedroom for them to have somewhere that is their own space.
You don’t need formal qualifications, but you’ll need:
Fife Council has legal responsibilities as the Corporate Parent when a child’s own parents are not able to take adequate care of them. The aim of the Council as Corporate Parent is to care for our looked after children as we would our own natural children.
Fife Council is working to achieve the best possible positive outcomes for 'looked after' children, young people and care-leavers by:
On our last Care Inspectorate review we were rated ‘Very Good’ across all areas.
The First Minister commissioned a Care Review in 2016 to find out how Scotland could love and care for its most vulnerable children and give them the childhood they deserve.
The work of the Care Review culminated in the publication of The Promise and all Scotland’s political parties pledged to #keepthepromise to Scotland’s children.
There are 5 main foundations to the Promise.
Children must be listened to and meaningfully and appropriately involved in decision-making about their care, with all those involved properly listening and responding to what children want and need. There must be a compassionate, caring decision-making culture focussed on children and those they trust.
Where children are safe in their families and feel loved they must stay – and families must be given support together, to nurture that love and overcome the difficulties which get in the way.
Where living with their family is not possible, children must stay with their brothers and sisters where safe to do so, and belong to a loving home, staying there for as long as needed.
The children must be actively supported to develop relationships with professionals and wider community, who in turn must be supported to listen and to be compassionate in their decision-making and care.
The Promise
https://www.carereview.scot/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-Promise.pdf
Pinkie Promise (for younger readers)
https://www.carereview.scot/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pinky-Promise.pdf
