In North Tyneside, our fostering team work with our fostering community to provide the best possible homes for children in care.
We know our carers do an extraordinary job of welcoming some of the most vulnerable children and young people into their homes, their families and their lives. Our carers advocate, care for and love those placed with them as if they were their own and do so with warmth, skills and good humour and regularly show remarkable resilience and tenacity that goes way beyond.
Our dedicated team is always on hand to offer high quality, effective and meaningful support to foster carers and are committed to having a training offer that meets the needs of foster carers and the children and young people they care for. We offer a great financial support package too.
We're recruiting foster carers right now. With a range of flexible roles on offer including full time, short break and emergency care, we can adapt your role to your availability.
If you have space in your home to welcome a young person and offer care, support, and commitment, find out more about our offer below.
How we support our foster carers
We offer a great range of support for our foster carers including:
Financial support
You'll receive regular payments through our 'payment for skills' graded structure, we pay additional fees for caring for two or more children and we pay the full amount you're required to pay for having a spare room in your home.
You will also receive an allowance for each child you care for which is age related which means it increases with the age of the child. We pay well above the National Minimum Allowance for children aged 16 and above.
We provide 'Ease' cards which gives you access to local facilities such as leisure and library centres at reduced rates.
Support from others
As well as ensuring you have specialist support from a fostering social worker, the support doesn't just come from us. We offer you the opportunity to 'buddy' with other carers for peer advice, support and mentoring and we run regular support groups and activities that we encourage our foster carers to come along to.
We're proud to be championing the award-winning Mockingbird Programme too and our first constellation is continuing to thrive. It's a model of foster care which replicates an extended family, offering support from experienced foster carers 24/7 to help increase the stability of care arrangements for children and to support our carers.
We have an effective out of hours service delivered by the Emergency Duty Team (EDT) should you need advice and support out of office hours.
Continuous training
We understand that caring for children can be a demanding role and that's why we'll supply you with a wide range of support. You'll have opportunities to take part in ongoing training with us so you're always gaining new skills, meeting others in the community and keeping up with new research and best practice.
We've recently enhanced our vast offer to further equip our fostering community to meet the needs of children and young people with complex additional social, emotional and mental health needs.
You will receive support from the Health, Information and Advice, Virtual School and Emotional Wellbeing Team (HIVE) which includes attachment training, behaviour management strategies, therapeutic parents and much more.
What our foster carers say about us
Fostering is very challenging. I have experienced many ups and downs, every young person I have cared for has been unique. We have faced many hurdles, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It's a learning experience, training is provided and you're never left to just get on with things. We have a strong network of foster carers who are supportive. Being a foster carer is an emotional roller coaster but is extremely rewarding. My young people have moved to independence, and they still keep in touch.
Anne T
We have been fostering carers for North Tyneside for 2 years and we have found the North Tyneside Fostering Service to be professional, friendly and very supportive. There are many excellent opportunities for training to support you in the fostering role. The children we have looked after have all been amazing and it's a lovely feeling just to be there for them. In our experience the role of a foster carer can be hard work, but it is also incredibly rewarding.
