Foster Carer - Five Rivers

Job Description:

Salary of £23,957* per year, with tax-free benefits.  

Are you looking for a meaningful vocation with life-changing potential? If you live in a loving, stable home and can offer a vulnerable child a safe place to live, becoming a Foster Carer could be right for you. 

Who can be a Foster Carer? 

To undertake this role, you must provide a safe and caring home environment for children to live in on a short- or long-term basis.

The essential criteria you will need to meet include: 

• Being passionate about making a difference to children. 
• Having the right to work in the UK and being a permanent UK resident. 
• Being over the age of 21.
• Having good IT skills and access to a computer.
• Speaking fluent English. 
• Having a furnished spare room that is not used by anybody else. 
• Being committed to undergoing training and development. 
• Working in partnership with the team caring for the child/young person. 

Foster Carers are paid to house and look after children who are temporarily or permanently unable to live with their birth families. You will work from home as part of a professional team committed to turning children's lives around. 

As a Foster Carer with Five Rivers Child Care, you will receive excellent support, which includes: 

• 24/7 support from our local fostering teams. 
• Training and opportunities to specialise in different types of care.
• Therapeutic training and support from our Clinical Services team.
• Options to look after children on a short- or longer-term basis.

In addition to this, you will receive some excellent benefits, which include:

- A competitive fostering allowance

A highly competitive fostering allowance (in most cases, the fostering allowance is tax-free).

- Paid breaks

Benefit from 14 days paid break annually.

- Refer a friend payment

Earn £2,000 for recruiting new carers (£1,000 for Respite Carers).

- Birthday Allowance

£200 per child will be paid to you to support with celebrating their birthday.

- Festival Allowance

£200 per child per year to support with celebrating festivals such as Christmas.

- Welcome payment

Receive a £75 gift on first approval as a welcome.

- Re-approval Gift

You will receive a personalised gift from your Supervising Social worker worth £100, following your re-approval.

- Blue Light Card

Enjoy discounts at various high street and out-of-town retailers and leisure venues.

Why become a Foster Carer with Five Rivers Child Care? 

• Helping young people in need: our Foster Carers give children a chance to have a brighter and happier future – what could be more rewarding than that? 
• Lifestyle: fostering gives you flexibility, and you can work from home. In some cases, it is possible to combine fostering with other work, too, depending on the needs of the children in your care. 
• The chance to start a meaningful vocation: Foster Carers are child care experts working with a team of professionals; they receive specialist training and and opportunities to specialise.
• Financial benefits: for many of our Foster Carers, fostering is their primary source of income. At Five Rivers, we offer competitive pay, paid respite and other benefits. 
• Join a social enterprise: Five Rivers differs from many foster care providers. We are a social enterprise, which means you will join a cause-driven organisation with a strong social mission to support children, families, and communities. 
• Join a progressive organisation - we work in partnership with our Foster Carers and value their feedback. We listen to and work with our Carers by co-hosting local, regional, and national forums to share feedback to shape our services. 

Fostering is extremely rewarding. Still, it can be challenging, so we invest in our foster carers by providing leading training, 24/7 support, and psychological expertise to help them do their work with children. You will be part of a special community of Foster Carers and join local support groups and buddy schemes. 

Click 'apply' to speak to our carer enquiries team to learn more about the role and decide if fostering is right for you.

 *Annual salary is based on the Foster Carer looking after one child for the full year.