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Every child and young person in foster care deserves a sense of community, belonging and safety.

Medway Council are recruiting fostering families to join our growing fostering community. We need people and families who can empower children and young people, offering stability, guidance, and security, contributing to their wellbeing.

Since the launch of our new fostering service in late 2021, our primary objective remains; to recruit and retain foster carers by increasing the number of approved in-house foster carers we have. To support our recruitment and retention drive, we now have in place a new competitive fostering package of allowances and fee payment structure for our foster carers.

The investment in Medway's in-house fostering service puts the Council in a position to offer increased financial support, improved allowances and more competitive benefits. This exciting new development extends to incentives such as competitive fostering rates, enhanced support 24/7 via a duty worker and out of hours, efficient matching process, and refreshed seasonal concessions such as a contribution towards annual Council Tax payments and discounts for Medway Adult Education courses.

Our priority is to improve the stability of placements and the care experience for children and young people in Medway by ensuring that wherever possible, they receive the best start in life so they can reach their full potential within a foster family environment. We always need foster carers for Medway children, particularly those in sibling groups, teenagers, parent and child, as well as children with additional needs.

Why do babies, children and young people enter the foster care system?

In Medway, there are children and young people growing up feeling alone, without basic parental care, or without the care they need. Safe homes and stable families are needed to look after children and young people from all backgrounds and will vary in age, but all will have one thing in common, that they can no longer remain living with their birth parents.

There are multiple reasons leading to babies, children and young people entering the foster care system. In the majority of cases, children have likely suffered trauma, violence, abuse, or may have come from a family breakdown, neglect or family illness.

Understanding the reasons why a child may be taken into care is a great way to grasp why foster care is so important and why we are always looking for new foster carers to join our growing fostering network.

Why do we need foster carers?

A foster carer can build a child’s trust through enabling positive parent-child interactions. This is achieved by the carer providing stability and security within a loving home environment which are the foundations of fostering.

Celebrating a child’s achievements, however small. Being inclusive of a child’s birth family and heritage enables a child to form a positive sense of themselves; this then creates an ability for a child to see themselves in a positive way, to believe that they can achieve good things and are worthy of achieving these.

Medway Council’s foster carers are skilled at enabling children in their care to feel accepted and to not be defined by their history. These skills, when applied in a non-judgemental way, can lead to a child or young person excelling in foster care, to being part of a foster family and gives children a chance to rebuild their lives.

Who can foster?

To match the diversity of our children in care, we actively encourage diversity within our fostering community and are keen to hear from you if you can offer security and a welcoming home to a looked after child; regardless of your gender, marital status, sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion or living with a disability.

You can also foster if you have pets, a disability, have children living at home, are a homeowner, or a private or social housing tenant.

People have also become foster carers with backgrounds from many different professions, such as solicitors, counselling, teaching, nursing, accountancy, and emergency services, like the police and ambulance staff, offering skill sets which can enhance your ability to foster. Fostering enables you the opportunity to make a difference in children’s lives, whilst still having a career and to work from home.

To become a Medway Foster carer, you must...

• have a spare bedroom for a foster child to use and make their own
• be over 21 years old to foster (no upper age limit)
• have at least one main carer based at home

You should also...

• be driver with access to a car
• be a British Citizen or have indefinite leave to remain in the UK
• offer a smoke-free environment
• be fit and healthy
• not have a birth child under the age of one years old
• live in Medway or within a 20-mile radius

Contact us to find out how about the professional foster carer benefits we offer.

If you have been considering fostering but are not sure of where to start or the questions to ask, the professional foster carer benefits we offer, why not get in touch with the team and let us talk you through the process or answer any questions you might have? Someone from the team will be in touch for an informal chat at a time that suits you.

Telephone: 01634 335726

Email: fcrecruitment@medway.gov.uk

Online enquiry form: https://www.medway.gov.uk/xfp/form/431

For regular service updates, you can also view Medway Council’s Facebook page or the fostering website.

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