Supervision and advice
Your supervising social worker and the child's social worker will provide you with advice and support throughout your fostering journey. You may also be paired up with an experienced local foster carer, who you can phone for a more informal source of support. Find out more about our fostering mentoring academy.
Supervising Social Worker
Each fostering household has their own supervising social worker (SSW). Our support workers are based locally - so help is never far away. This worker provides support and supervision to foster carers including:
- Providing support and advice
- Signposting to other support services
- Working with children’s social workers
- Contributing to care planning for children in our fostering homes.
Foster carers have told us that their relationship with their supervising social worker is important and a key motivation to choose to foster with us.
Out of hours support fostering advice line
During evenings and weekends our friendly and helpful social workers are available on our out of hour’s advice line.
This is available Monday to Friday 6pm to 11pm and during weekends and bank holidays from 8am to 11pm. You can ring the advice line to discuss any concerns you have, and a fostering team worker will suggest appropriate actions.
You'll get specialist advice on things like education or mental health when you need it. You may also be paired up with a buddy, an experienced local foster carer who you can phone for more informal support.
In-house therapeutic support
As your local council we are committed to being trauma informed. We have invested in our own in-house therapeutic support team located within the fostering service so you can access timely and comprehensive support. Our SCAYT+ (supporting carers and young people together) therapeutic team is led by clinical child psychologists who work on strengthening the relationships between foster carers and the children in their care.
Using a range of approaches underpinned by therapeutic principles, SCAYT+ will work with foster carers to help them build and maintain resilience and develop strategies to support the fostering family as a whole.
Lancashire intervention for families team (LIFT)
We have a team of experienced foster carers who are trained to provide practical and emotional support to carers. This targeted support aims to ensure carers can continue look after the children in their care.
Julie has been involved with our LIFT project and said:
"I have worked with both birth families and foster carers and the one thing that we all have in common is everyone’s journey is different. I always advise the families I work with that I don’t have a magic wand, but with positive thoughts we can create positive outcomes.
When things get tough and families feel the struggle, I ask them to hang in there and take things day by day and I will be with them all the way.
Helping the families I work with is very important to me and I want them to succeed."
Learn about our other benefits and support when you foster for Lancashire.
Get in touch
Make a difference to a child's life and foster for Lancashire.
If you'd prefer to speak to someone give us a call on:
0300 123 6723