Space at home and love in your heart? You could make it as a foster carer

EVERY child deserves a safe place to call home and an unwavering network of love and support.

- BY ANNA VARLEY

For children who are currently waiting to be placed with a loving foster family, this concept may feel like a distant daydream.

Foster4 is a collaborative foster carer recruitment service, recruiting foster carers on behalf of eight Cheshire and Merseyside local authorities: Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Warrington and Wirral.

By pooling resources, the service aims to recruit even more foster carers, provide greater support to existing foster carers and ultimately keep more local children with local foster carers.

As the local authority, the service undertakes the assessments around when a child should come into care. Its social workers know all its children well and, in many cases, have been working with them and their families for a number of years.

When the decision is made that a child does need to come into the service's care, it strives to place the child locally, within their home community with its own local authority foster carers, who will be able to keep a child living in their own home town, or very close by, which the service believes is critical for the emotional wellbeing of children, as well as developing their sense of safety and stability and maintaining their sense of identity and belonging.

For many children and young people, it can be particularly important for them to remain at their own schools, as this is often the most stable part of their lives.