FAQ’s

Yes, to foster with us, you are required to have a spare bedroom.

To foster with Kibble, you are not required to have any experience however, foster carers must have an interest in, and enjoy working with young people. They will need to be patient and understand that some of the young people may have had difficult early childhood experiences and need caring adults to be supportive and nurturing.  A commitment to valuing and respecting children and young adults is essential. You don’t require any previous qualifications to become a foster carer – we provide a comprehensive training programme.

All foster carers undergo a Protection of Vulnerable Groups (PVG) check. We need to know about all criminal convictions, and this is determined at an early stage of the process. While not all convictions will prevent you from proceeding, there are certain convictions that would prohibit you from becoming a foster carer.

All full-time foster carers must complete an HNC and an SVQ in Social Service which will be provided by the organisation. You will also be supported to undertake other mandatory training. In addition, we shall always seek to support each of our foster carers to gain insight into the individual needs of the young person they are caring and tailor additional support and training accordingly.

We are very thorough when considering referrals of young people and how we then match them to a Kibble foster carer. Our intention is to always ensure our foster carers are key individuals who are fully involved in all aspects of our comprehensive matching process as we work collectively to ensure we can be as confident as possible in meeting the needs of both you and the young person.

We have dedicated emergency short breaks workers who will be available to support or the young person during an emergency. We also provide 24/7 ON CALL support from our management team throughout the whole year.

Spending time or staying in touch with family members can be very important to our young people. There are various ways they can do this including indirectly (e.g., letters or cards), or directly through being supported to spend time with family.

Often there are meetings to attend such as progress meetings, LAAC (Looked After and Accommodated Child) reviews, Children’s Hearings etc. and the parents along with the foster carer are often in attendance at these too.

There can be restrictions on who or when a young person can stay in touch with others including, occasionally, some family members. We shall support you to understand any restrictions and what this can mean for the young person in your care.

This depends on the type of placement you wish to offer. For full-time foster carers and full-time short breaks carers, we would ask that your focus is on the young person/young people in your care and that you have no other employment. Because of this we offer very generous professional fees and allowances. The only exceptions to this are the pro-rata and adult placement carer roles where you may be in other employment.

The age range for our fostering service is 5-25. If you are interested in fostering babies, we would recommend you contact another fostering agency, or local authority, that works with children of that age range.

Yes, if this is agreed by the young person’s care team. We would want the child or young person to have lots of positive experiences and opportunities.

Yes. All our carers receive 28 days paid short breaks per year. The exception to this is pro-rata carers.

This can depend on various things. However, as a general rule the process can take approximately six months.