Your Follow-up Visit: What to Expect
After you’ve had your information call or visit with one of our fostering advisers, your next step will be to have a follow-up visit. Unlike your initial chat with our fostering adviser, follow-up visits take place face-to-face in your home. We’ve put together this useful guide to help you understand what to expect from your visit.
“The whole process was laid back and relaxed. It was like getting to know a friend. They got to know us and we got to know them over a cuppa and a chat. Nothing scary about it.”
- Becky, foster carer
What is a follow up visit?
Follow-up visits are the bridge between your initial information call and the beginning of your application to become a foster carer. It’s nothing to be concerned about, though. During this visit our friendly team of fostering advisers are keen to get to know you and your family better and talk about your expectations and understanding of fostering. A great way to get a deeper understanding before your visit is to take a look at our website, where we’ve collected a wealth of information, including answers to frequently asked questions, inspirational stories from our amazing current foster carers and informative blogs about different aspects of foster care. Reading these might also help you think of some questions that you’d like to ask.
What kind of things will we discuss?
We’ll take this opportunity to ask you to show us around your home. This is an important part of the process as we need to determine whether it is a suitable place for a looked after child to live.
We’ll talk about your overall health and well-being. Don’t worry - experience of mental or physical ill-health is not an automatic barrier to fostering, but we do need to make sure that you can cope with the demands of caring for a child. We also need to know if anyone in your household smokes or vapes.
During the visit, we appreciate hearing about your interests and skills as they will feed into your life as a foster carer. We’ll chat about your employment history and your current role and discuss any possible impact that fostering may have. Many employers carry the ‘Fostering Friendly’ accreditation as a sign of the value they place on having foster carers in their organisation. As foster carers often have to attend meetings with social workers, schools and children’s birth families, as well as support groups and training, it is important that you have the flexibility to make yourself available.
Who should attend?
If you are part of a couple then you will both need to attend the visit and although we don’t need to meet your children they might like to speak to us and ask any questions they have. It’s important that everyone is on board with the process and understands what it entails. People who visit regularly don’t have to attend, but we’d love to hear about your close family and friends so we know about your community. It’s therefore important that you discuss your intention to apply to be a foster carer with your family, as everyone will need to be involved. We’ll need to meet your pets, too, to make sure that they will be okay around children.
Do we need to prepare anything?
Follow-up visits are very informal, so don’t worry about gathering together lots of information or paperwork. The emphasis is very much on talking things over with the fostering adviser, so you might want to think about any questions you’d like to ask. You’ll likely cover topics that will come up later on in the application process, at which point we can look at them in more detail. The only paperwork you might need is proof of ‘right to remain’ in the country if you’ve immigrated to the UK.
Ready to begin?
Ready to book your follow-up visit? You should have an email in your inbox from Fostering Rotherham with the link to book it. Don't have the link? Please email support@fosteringrotherham.com and we can send it over.
At the start of your fostering journey? Why not learn about our information visits here or book in for an information call with one of our fostering advisers here