One minute guide: Leeds fostering service

What is Leeds Fostering Service

Leeds City Council recognises that a child’s needs are best met by a nurturing family and is committed to placing children who are not able to remain in their own family in appropriate alternative family-based placements wherever possible.

Fostering is where a child or young person between the ages of 0 and 18 who has become looked after lives with a foster carer in a family home. This is often temporary or short-term. but is sometimes a long-term arrangement.

The council’s Fostering Service manages this work. The service aims to place children and young people within Leeds in order for them to maintain contact with family members and friends, to continue at the same school and thrive within their community, where it is safe to do so.

Leeds Fostering Service’s main areas of work are:

• recruiting and retaining foster carers - there is a dedicated team for this
• supporting existing foster carers - there are five teams of Supervising Social Workers, including one specialist team supporting carers of children with complex needs, and four teams for supporting mainstream foster carers
• working with kinship (family and friends) carers. There is a separate Kinship Care service with dedicated teams for the assessment, supervision and support of kinship (family and friends) carers

How to become a foster carer

The council has its own Foster4Leeds website, and through this, people are encouraged to register an interest in becoming a foster carer.

People over the age of 21 may apply to become a foster carer, but those between the ages of 21 and 25 years would need to provide evidence of relevant transferable skills or related experience. There is no upper age limit for foster carers. Interest is welcomed from all members of the community, regardless of relationship status, employment situation, class, gender, sexuality, culture, ethnicity or religion. Leeds is usually seeking to recruit more foster carers for teenagers and for those with the skills to work with children and young people with complex needs. There is immediate exclusion of any applicant who has been convicted of any serious offence against a child or adult.

There is an approval process, which starts with a conversation about fostering and is followed (if both parties agree to proceed at each stage) by: a home visit; training; preparation; and, if appropriate, the formal application and statutory checks.

Prospective foster carers must enjoy the challenges of childcare and have qualities such as patience, resourcefulness, flexibility and a sense of humour.

Foster carers are provided with various types of support, including financial support, to help them with their role.

Types of fostering placements in Leeds

Foster carer placements can be for children of all ages, from babies and young children to older children and young people, including teenagers. All long-term placement matches of children, young people and foster carers must be made by a fostering panel.

There are a number of different types of fostering placement in Leeds, including: 

Short term

This is a time-limited arrangement.

Long term

This is for planned, permanent placements where a decision has been made that this is the best arrangement for the child or young person.

Short breaks

This is planned, where children and young people stay with another foster carer as part of the child’s plan.

Parent / Child assessment

This is where the child and parent(s) stay together in a placement to help provide an assessment of the parents’ ability to care for their child as part of an agreed plan. Residential and non-residential placements are available.

Support care

This is part of a package of support (including daycare and child minding) where carers provide planned, time-limited support to maintain children within their families and prevent children from coming into care.

Fostering for children and young people with disabilities

This includes the same range of fostering placements as above, but the foster carers have specialist skills and experience of providing care to disabled children.

Kinship care

This is where placements are provided by people already known to the child or young person and may be a family member or a friend. These placements involve family members or friends who have been approved by the local authority as foster carers. There is a separate service that assesses and supports kinship carers, special guardians and private fostering arrangements.

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