Fostering a child is one of the most rewarding experiences, but it also presents unique challenges. When fostering a child with special needs—whether physical, emotional, or developmental—additional care, resources, and strategies are required to help the child thrive. These children, like all children, need love, patience, and stability, but they may also need extra support to reach their full potential.
In this guide, we’ll explore key strategies for fostering children with special needs and how to create an environment of understanding, support, and growth.
Understanding the Needs of Children with Special Needs
“Special needs” encompasses a wide range of conditions, including:
Physical Disabilities: Mobility challenges, chronic illnesses, or sensory impairments.
Developmental Disabilities: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down syndrome, or learning disabilities.
Emotional and Behavioural Needs: Mental health challenges like anxiety, ADHD, PTSD, or trauma-related behaviours.
Every child is unique, and their needs vary. Foster carers must approach each situation with an open mind and a willingness to learn.
Example: One carer shared that a child with autism in their care found security in a structured routine. By establishing consistent mealtimes and bedtime rituals, the child felt more at ease and confident in their new environment.
Key Strategies for Supporting Children with Special Needs
1. Get to Know the Child’s Individual Needs
Understanding the child’s specific needs is essential to providing the best care.
Review Records: Study the child’s medical, educational, and social work reports for insights into their history and professional recommendations.
Ask Questions: Collaborate with social workers, teachers, and therapists to understand the child’s unique needs and preferences.
Build Trust: Take the time to establish a trusting relationship by learning about the child’s routines, coping mechanisms, and interests.
2. Create a Safe and Structured Environment
A predictable environment can help children with special needs feel secure and reduce anxiety.
Consistent Routine: Maintain regular daily schedules for meals, activities, and bedtime to provide stability.
Safe Spaces: Create a calm area where the child can retreat when feeling overwhelmed. Include sensory toys, soft lighting, or soothing activities.
Home Adjustments: Make necessary changes, such as installing ramps for mobility needs or using sensory-friendly lighting for children with sensitivities.
Example: A foster carer transformed a corner of their living room into a sensory-friendly space with soft cushions, fidget toys, and dim lighting to help a child with sensory processing disorder feel safe and calm.
3. Collaborate with Professionals
Working closely with professionals ensures the child’s needs are met consistently.
Therapists: Stay in regular contact with speech, occupational, and physical therapists to align care strategies.
Medical Support: Track medical appointments and treatments, and maintain clear communication with healthcare providers.
Educational Support: Work with the child’s school to ensure they receive appropriate accommodations, such as an Individual Education Plan (IEP) or specialized learning tools.
4. Advocate for the Child
Children with special needs often require additional advocacy to access the services and support they deserve.
Education Advocacy: Ensure the child receives appropriate educational accommodations, such as extended test times or specialized learning tools.
Community Involvement: Help the child participate in community programs, extracurricular activities, or social groups tailored to their needs.
Legal Support: Collaborate with social workers to ensure the child’s rights are upheld and that they access necessary social services.
5. Practice Patience and Flexibility
Progress for children with special needs may be slow or non-linear, requiring patience and adaptability.
Be Patient: Celebrate small victories and understand that setbacks are part of the journey.
Adjust Expectations: Recognize that milestones may take longer to achieve, and set realistic, individualized goals.
Be Flexible: Adapt your approach as the child’s needs evolve, trying different strategies as necessary.
Example: A foster carer found that breaking homework into shorter, manageable sessions helped reduce a child’s anxiety and improved focus, demonstrating the importance of flexibility in caregiving.
6. Support the Child’s Emotional Needs
Children with special needs often carry emotional wounds from trauma or neglect. Providing consistent emotional support is vital.
Empathy and Validation: Show understanding and compassion for the child’s emotional struggles.
Therapeutic Techniques: Use positive reinforcement, clear boundaries, and trauma-informed care strategies to support the child’s emotional well-being.
Consistent Reassurance: Provide ongoing emotional support and reassurance, especially during times of uncertainty or change.
Self-Care for Foster Carers
Caring for a child with special needs can be emotionally and physically demanding. Prioritizing self-care is essential to maintaining your well-being and effectiveness as a carer.
Seek Support: Connect with other foster carers who understand the challenges of caring for children with special needs.
Take Breaks: Utilize respite care when needed to recharge and avoid burnout.
Access Professional Support: Consider counselling or mental health support if the stress of caregiving becomes overwhelming.
Next Steps and Resources
For additional guidance and support, explore these helpful resources:
Fostering a child with special needs is both challenging and profoundly rewarding. By providing a safe, structured environment, collaborating with professionals, advocating for the child’s needs, and prioritizing your own well-being, you can help these children thrive. Every child’s journey is unique, but with compassion and dedication, you can make a lasting impact.
Thank you for your unwavering commitment to changing lives.
Fostering a child can be one of the most rewarding experiences a family can undertake. However, it also comes with its unique challenges and responsibilities. Creating a welcoming home for foster children is essential in helping them feel safe, loved, and supported during a potentially tumultuous time in their lives. If you are considering fostering or have just welcomed a child into your home, here are some practical tips and best practices to help you create an inviting and nurturing environment.
1. Prepare Your Space
Create a Cosy and Personal Room
Designate a space just for your foster child. It can be a separate bedroom or a cosy corner in a shared room. Personalise the space with bedding, colours, and decor that reflects their interests. If possible, let them choose their own items like stuffed animals, posters, or art supplies this helps them feel a sense of ownership and belonging.
Foster Safety
Ensure that your home is childproofed. This includes securing heavy furniture, covering electrical outlets, and making sure that any hazardous materials are out of reach. Conduct a safety checklist to cover all bases the comfort and safety of the child should always be your top priority.
Stock Up on Essentials
Fill their space with essential supplies such as clothes, toiletries, and school supplies. Providing these basics not only demonstrates thoughtfulness but helps foster children ease into their new home without feeling out of place or anxious about missing their necessities.
2. Establish Open Communication
Build Trust
One of the most important aspects of fostering is establishing trust. Foster children may arrive with various emotional wounds and trust issues due to past experiences. Make it a point to listen actively to their concerns and feelings. Creating an atmosphere where they feel they can open up this will significantly enhance your relationship.
Set Clear Expectations
From the start, establish clear house rules and explain them gently. This helps children understand what is expected of them, and it provides a sense of stability and security. Use age-appropriate language and encourage questions to ensure that they fully comprehend the rules.
3. Foster Positive Relationships
Involve Them in Family Activities
Involve your foster child in your family’s ongoing activities like cooking, family game nights, or errands. This inclusion cultivates a sense of belonging. You can even offer to let them choose what to watch during movie nights or pick the family meal once a week.
Create Traditions
Establishing family traditions can provide comfort and stability for foster children. Consider creating a monthly game night, a yearly camping trip, or seasonal festivities that everyone in the family can look forward to. Traditions allow the foster child to feel like a valued and integral part of the family unit.
Encourage Connections
Support the child’s interests by encouraging them to connect with others, whether through sports, arts, or other extracurricular activities. Engaging in social settings can improve their self-esteem and help develop friendships, which are crucial during their adjustment period.
4. Provide Emotional Support
Be Patient
Every child is unique, and many foster children may take time to adjust to their new environment. Patience is key; allow them to come out of their shell at their own pace. Consistently reassuring them of your support will eventually help them feel safe and secure.
Professional Support
Consider how you utilise the support of professionals like therapists or social workers, especially if the child exhibits challenging behaviour. Professional guidance can offer insights and strategies for handling specific challenges and emotional hurdles.
5. Resources for Family and Foster Children
Stay Informed
Educate yourself about the legal aspects of fostering and any emotional challenges that may arise. Books, online courses, and support groups can provide valuable insights. Engaging with other foster families can also offer a support network that shares experiences and advice.
Encourage Openness
Encourage open dialogue within your family about feelings and challenges that each member faces. Acknowledging insecurities and emotions allows the family to grow closer and offers the foster child a healthy model for managing their feelings.
Overall
Creating a welcoming home for foster children requires intention, patience, and love. By equipping your home, fostering trust, establishing strong relationships, providing emotional support, and utilising available resources, you can create an environment that not only supports a child in need but also enriches your family as a whole. Remember, fostering is a journey of learning and growth for both the child and the family. With the right mindset and preparation, you can make a meaningful difference in a child’s life, inspiring them toward a brighter future.
As what feels as though the longest January ever ends, take a look back to see everything that you have achieved over this last month. Schedule yourself an hour at some point this week to sit down by yourself, take yourself to a coffee shop away from the chaos of your home, go for a walk or a swim, or something that you enjoy doing and create a list of your achievements for the month. Whether this is a mental list, a list in your phone or written in a notepad or diary. As humans we strive for better outcomes for ourselves, so it is important to note and celebrate our successes, rather than just focusing on our failures.
Developing self-reflection will help you to become more self-aware around the choices you are making, the experiences you are creating and how you are developing yourself, whether this be in your personal life or as a foster carer. So what that your pile of washing is coming out of the washing basket, your sink has some washing up from breakfast in it still. You are still doing a good job as a foster carer and making a difference to young people’s lives, children long for warmth and love, not a spotless home.
When you feel like times may be getting a bit tough take some time out and think about your successes and choices. Take the time to listen to your body, it is normal for everyone to get burned out, tired, or stressed with their job and as foster carers these feelings are still valid. For me I find it good to write down how I feel when things are getting too much. Try think about these following questions when you are having these feelings.
· How am I feeling right now?
· Why am I feeling like this?
· Is there anything I can do, or anyone I can speak to about how I am feeling?
· How much has my life changed since fostering?
· What have I done to make myself proud this month?
· How have I taken time to myself this month?
· What do I enjoy about being a foster carer?
· How can I develop in my role? Can anyone give me guidance on how to achieve this?
· What have I found challenging over the past month?
· What would I like to do differently next month? And how will I be able to do this?
You can choose to share these answers with another person or keep them to yourself but remember to keep note of these to look back on in the future. Remember fostering, like your normal life will have many ups and downs and many challenges. The decision you have made to become a foster carer will have a massive impact on the lives of young people, even if this difference is only small the changes it can make to a young person’s life can be significant. What could be more special than that?
In this blog we are focusing on children who are exhibiting challenging behaviours whilst in foster care and ways in which their foster carers can support them.
There is a misconception that children who are ‘behaving badly’ are ‘naughty children’. This can be correct, but usually there is reason behind the behaviours.
Every child who enters the care system will be there for different reasons. Some may need some short-term care whilst a parent/carer is managing an illness, others may have experienced extreme abuse and neglect throughout their childhood.
Due to this some children may be perceived as challenging and exhibit “bad behaviours”. However, there are steps as a foster carer you can take to try and prevent this and help the foster child settle into your home.
What can I do as a foster carer?
1. Set some clear house rules
When a foster child is coming into a new environment, they will not know all the rules of the house. Your job as a foster carer is to sit down with the foster child/children and explain the house rules to them. You need to ensure that the whole family is abiding to these rules and not just the foster children. If the foster children receive different rules from the others in the household, they may start to feel vulnerable which could in turn cause upset and anger towards the foster carers.
This will usually be done with your supervising social worker in a Safer Caring Agreement meeting. The meeting will include the foster carer/s the foster child/ren and your supervising social worker, it may also include the child’s social worker from the local authority.
Adults within the household who are implementing the rules need to ensure that they are on the same page when instilling the rules to the children. The approach needs to be consistent if not the foster child may notice the inconsistency in authority within the household and attempt to challenge this.
2. Outline expectations
When trying to manage behaviour it is vital that you as the foster carer outline all the expectations of the foster child. For example, this could be something such as keeping their bedrooms tidy or helping unload the dishwasher three times a week. By giving specific expectations to the foster child, it can instil a sense of responsibility and purpose.
3. Lead by example
Behave as you want children to behave, it is incredibly important that you behave positively to ensure that this is reinforced. For example, we all have times of disagreement, however these disagreements should be settled in a calm manner, through discussion rather than resorting to volatile language and shouting.
4. Praise!!
Praise is so important to any child. Praise will help to build confidence and self-esteem. It is not uncommon that children within the care system have low self-confidence and self-esteem, yet with giving praise where praise is deserved these attributions will improve. With better self confidence and self-esteem, it will allow the foster child to express themselves positively.
Managing behaviour of young people and children is not just an art, there is a considerable amount of thought, training and experience that will support the work needed to be done.
This is by no means a complete guide but more of a small insight to working with children with challenging behaviour, we hope you found this useful as there are an immense amount of resources one can explore.
In accordance with fostering Service Regulations, Brighter Fostering maintains a central list of panel members who are selected to reflect the community that the panel serves, who may be professionals and service user between them who have a vast range of experience. The panel may include a Brighter Fostering social worker or senior member with Panel experience but predominantly will consist of independent adults with experience and knowledge of fostering and those who work in children’s social care, or health and education.
The convene a Fostering Panel Meeting the following people must come together:
A Panel Chairperson
They are not an employee of Brighter Fostering, but an Independent person with the necessary skills knowledge and expertise to chair the panel.
A Vice Chair
This person is responsible for chairing meetings in the chair’s absence or when the position of chair is vacant.
One Social Worker
They will have at least 3 years relevant post-qualification experience in childcare with direct experience of fostering or in placing/supervising children in foster care.
At least three other Members
Panel membership must include at least 3 other members not including the independent Chairperson. Where possible Brighter Fostering will request at least one foster/adoptive parent from another service and when, if possible, a former looked after young person who now meets the necessary conditions to join the panel.
The Panel Adviser
At Brighter Fostering, this role is fulfilled by our Service Development Manager. We also have an Independent Panel Advisor who in a previous role was a Senior Social Worker and Independent Reviewing Officer. Any one of the Panel Advisers will be present at the panel meeting. The Panel Adviser is there to advise panel members on regulations, agency policy, practice and performance requirements.
The assessing social worker will be there with the applicant to explain the recommendation to the panel and, if the applicant wishes, they can bring a friend or relative for support. That person can come into panel or stay in the waiting area, whilst the panel members deliberate and meet the assessing social worker and the applicants.
Before the panel, the chair will come and introduce themselves and explain what will happen and how the panel works.
The panel will discuss your application and then ask the assessing social worker any questions, after that the applicant will be requested to come in and join them along with the assessing social worker. The panel will then introduce themselves and ask a few questions, including your answers to the children’s questions.
What will the fostering panel ask the applicants?
Panel members might ask about the assessment, the training and why the applicants are looking forward to becoming future foster carers.
The panel will be likely to also ask the assessing social worker some questions if there are things that they need to clarify after reading the completed assessment report. They are there just to clarify issues and not to interrogate the applicants.
What happens next?
After introductions and asking the necessary questions, the applicants and the assessing social worker will be asked to return to the waiting area while panel considers their recommendation.
Having concluded its discussions and deliberations, the Panel must do one of three things:
1. Recommend for approval as suggested in the assessment report by the assessing social worker, which will include reasons why the panel feels the applicant is suitable to foster, number of placements, age, gender, and type of placement.
2. Defer a recommendation with reasons for their deferral, this may be down to requiring more information about the applicant’s suitability to foster.
3. Recommend Not to Approve, if the panel feels the applicants are not suitable to foster, reasons will be shared with applicants for why the recommendation is being made.
The Panel Chair, with consulting the panel members, will then inform the applicant about their recommendation and that The Brighter Fostering Agency Decision Maker (ADM), will consider that recommendation and make a formal decision as to whether the applicant should be approved as a foster parent.
The Decision is made by the Agency Decision Maker (ADM)
This decision will be made as quickly as possible and will normally be communicated to the applicants as soon as the ADM makes their decision and then in writing within 10 working days of the decision.
Following the panel, applicants will receive a feedback form to let Brighter Fostering know your views on the assessment and the panel experience. This will be helpful and will inform the service what is working well and whether there are any areas we can improve on.
The overall experience of Fostering Applicants
Attending panel may feel a bit daunting and the idea of a room full of people asking applicants questions might feel overwhelming, but the truth is most people having attended a panel meeting it is definitely not intimidating which they had feared and that panel members are friendly and welcoming.
All panel members will be aware that people may be a bit anxious about attending and they will try to help applicants to feel relaxed, at ease and be comfortable, having completed an intense assessment process, this is the final stage of process, so remain positive.
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