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Welcome to our December edition of Fostering News. In this newsletter our group manager Sophie Eadsforth and our fostering service manager Ty Yousaf wish to share a message of thanks to all of our fostering community and a roundup of the year. It’s time to celebrate our carers who have reached long service milestones in 2019, and we'd love for you to watch and share our new fostering film!
Dear Foster Carers,
We would like to wish you all of the best during the festive period, and we hope that your families and the children in your care have a fantastic Christmas and a happy New Year.
Thank you to all those who have found the time to take part in our annual survey and again, we have had an excellent response. It is so important for us to hear about your experiences and ideas for the future.
This has been an exciting year for us all as there have been so many events and achievements. The Fostering Recruitment and Assessment team is now up and running, you are now all receiving these informative monthly newsletters, the Facebook page and the fostering website has been revamped, the staff conference held in September felt really positive and we are all delighted with the fostering film. The levels payments have increased, the MAX card has been issued, we have recruited more fostering family workers so that we can link a family worker with each team and we are running monthly information evenings/events, including new links and events with the faith communities.
We have been meeting with the Educational Psychology Service following the conference as we were blown away by the workshops that we attended. We listened to the feedback following these sessions and have been making plans for this service to provide training sessions for all of you in 2020. This will enable you all to be called “therapeutically trained foster carers” and will give you more confidence to handle difficult situations to the best of your ability whilst feeling supported throughout the process.
As you are all aware, we have been working hard to set up fostering support meetings for small groups of you to take place on a regular basis. We are hoping that these will be set up in the very near future and that you will find these supportive environments an invaluable experience.
Thank you all for your hard work and commitment to fostering for Nottinghamshire. We have enjoyed meeting with several of you at various events and hope to continue to meet with you and listen to your ideas and feedback at future events.
Many thanks to you all.
Sophie Eadsforth, Group Manager for Childrens, Families and Cultural Services, and
Ty Yousaf, Fostering Service Manager.
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Every December we celebrate our carers that have reached long service milestones within the year.
Thank you all for your on going commitment to fostering and well done for reaching these impressive milestones!
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10 years
- Sarah and Bryan Cherry – North
- Lisa Nelson - North
- Victoria McKinlay - North
- Sonia Grogan – Central
- Emma & Paul Scott – South
- Kate & John Wheat – South
- Charlotte & Danny Morton
– Fostering Futures
- Tina Rees – Fostering Futures
- Elaine & Andy Smith
– Fostering Futures
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25 years
- Lesley & Keith White – Central
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15 years
- Julie Hall – Fostering Futures
- Aleks Jackwoska – Fostering Futures
- Rebecca & Andrew Jackson – Fostering Futures
- Rachel & Glen Cutts – North
- Karina & Adrian Hemsley – Central
- Barbara & Paul Hopkins – Central
- Fred Moffat – South
- Lesley Marshall & Lewis Lack – South
- Dawn and Lee Clements – South
- Tracey & Colin Sabin – South
- Kellie Ashton – Short Breaks
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30 years
- Janet & Peter Millband – Central
- Kath Peace – Fostering Futures
- Lyn Hargreaves - South
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20 years
- Lynne & Barry Gott-Shepherd – North
- Sharon Wilkinson – North
- Eleanor & John Morrison
– Fostering Futures
- Michele & Jason Williams
– Fostering Futures
- Jane & Graeme Lake – South
- Lorraine & Peter Chappell – South
- Lyndsey & Ewan Freeman – South
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35 years
- Lynn and Roger Martindale – North
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We hope that by now you have been able to watch our brilliant 15-minute fostering film that we have made to showcase fostering in Nottinghamshire.
We are really proud of it and so grateful to all the carers who gave up their time to participate with the filming. We now want to share it as far and wide as we can to recruit as many new carers as possible.
If you have any links to venues that might be able to show our film (like GP surgeries, cinemas, community centres etc.) then please get in touch! You can email any suggestions you have to fostering@nottscc.gov.uk.
If you haven’t seen the film, you can watch it on our website. Enjoy!
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We are highlighting some courses in each Fostering News email where there is still availability to book, you may need to log in to My Learning My Career first, but then you will be able to click 'sign up' and book on!
The wonderful local charity My Bag have been selected by the CO-OP to give their members the opportunity to donate 1% of the value of their shopping to My Bag each time they shop, at no cost to the customer! My Bag support young people coming into care by giving them a useful holdall bag or backpack to call their own, containing both comforting and useful items. Your foster child’s social worker has access to these bags so please contact them if your child arrives at a new placement without one.
Also, Amazon has a sister site called AmazonSmile. It is exactly the same as shopping at Amazon, however 0.5% of the net purchase price of your shopping is donated by Amazon to your chosen charity. My Bag is available to choose on AmazonSmile, so why not select My Bag for your chosen charity whilst shopping at both Amazon and CO-OP today and support this fantastic charity while you’re doing your Christmas shopping!
Visit smile.amazon.co.uk and coop.co.uk/membership to learn more.
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Nottinghamshire County Council are developing a Work Experience Readiness and Knowledge (WERK) Programme, which will be one of our key initiatives for supporting our looked after children and care leavers into training and job opportunities, find out more about the support we are putting in place for young care leavers:
Share and like posts on our Facebook page to help spread the message that we need more foster carers. All our fostering information evening events are listed on our Facebook page too, let us know if you'd like to come along and support us at one!
Visit our website for foster carers - find the foster carers' handbook, information on carers' benefits and more on our dedicated website for foster carers.
As we have now moved to monthly information evenings, we have been asking for support from our carers at these events as the attendees find it invaluable to ask our carers direct questions at the start of their fostering journey and we are finding fewer requests for buddy visits later on due to this. We are really grateful to everyone who has supported us with our recruitment and training events this year and want to thank those who have given up their evenings and weekends to join us.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all!
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