Sandwell Council and Sandwell Children’s Trust are celebrating the launch of Foster Care Fortnight in Sandwell
This is when we join a national campaign to raise awareness of the need for foster carers to help us to improve the lives of Sandwell’s most vulnerable children.
Over the next two weeks the FosterSandwell team at Sandwell Children’s Trust will be sharing stories from our foster carers, care experienced young people and members of staff about the relationships we have built through fostering.
As Councillor Jalal Uddin, Cabinet Member for Children and Families for Sandwell Council reflects;
“The theme of this year’s Foster Care Fortnight is ‘Fostering connections’ and that’s so appropriate here in Sandwell – our foster carers really do make up Sandwell’s biggest family. They support each other and we are very grateful for everything that they do.
But the reality is we need more foster carers to help us look after Sandwell’s most vulnerable children, so that together we can give them a better start in life.”
That message is crucial, here in Sandwell just as it is nationally, that there is an urgent need for more foster carers, as Emma Taylor, CEO of Sandwell Children’s Trust says;
“The message of Foster Care Fortnight is simple – we want to say ‘thank-you’ to our brilliant foster carers we have here in Sandwell and if you are thinking about fostering, now is the time to come and join us. We have a great team to support you on your fostering journey and together we can really help to make life better for the children who need to come into our care.”
Katy Berryman is a Sandwell foster carer, who is actively supporting Foster Care Fortnight and spoke about the theme of this year’s campaign;
“Through my work as a foster carer, I’ve got to know a lovely local couple who have offered a permanent home to a child I was caring for, while his future could be arranged. Because they are local it’s been easy to stay in touch and I know we’ll be friends with them for ever – and I’ll get to see this little boy, who I’ve had from 5-days old, grow into a wonderful person, because of the connection I’ve made.”
In Sandwell the fostering service run by Sandwell Children’s Trust on behalf of Sandwell Council has twice been rated ‘Good’ by Ofsted and will be marking Foster Care Fortnight with a series of testimonies on social media from foster carers, the social work team and care experienced young people, to highlight the power of the fostering connections that we make in Sandwell.
During Foster Care Fortnight the FosterSandwell team will also have pop-up information stands, a website takeover of www.fostersandwell.co.uk and a coffee morning for all our foster carers and the social workers who support them culminating in a special Foster Care Fortnight Fostering Information event on Thursday 22nd May at 6.30pm at the Trust’s Metsec office on Broadwell Road, Oldbury B69 4HE.
Foster Care Fortnight is a national campaign run by the Fostering Network, the national charity for fostering, who work to bring together everyone who is involved in the lives of children in foster care. Supporting foster carers to transform children’s lives and working with fostering services and the wider sector to develop and share best practice.
According to the Fostering Network approximately 70,000 children live with just over 52,000 foster families in the UK. This is nearly three-quarters of almost 100,000 children who are in care and who live away from home on any one day in the UK. Many of these children are in care due to abuse or neglect.