If you’ve been thinking about becoming a foster carer, no doubt you’ll have heard the term ‘Form F’ used when detailing the journey into fostering.

Sam Cornforth, Recruitment Administrator, discusses just what exactly a Form F is, how it’s used and why it is so important..

Sam Cornforth of Team Fostering

“A Form F is the term used to describe the document that is presented to a panel of people who make a recommendation as to whether someone should become a foster carer. It is an in-depth look at the applicant/s and covers aspects of their life including childhood and education, adult life and employment, personality, relationships and, if applicable, birth children. The rest of the form is dedicated to assessing applicants’ capacity to foster.

It is thorough and rigorous and requires an applicant to be open and honest throughout the process, but each session with applicants’ assessing social workers will be sensitively handled so that they may compile the best and most accurate version of potential fostering families. This is important, as we at Team Fostering are dedicated to putting children’s futures first. To allow us to give a child the best chance, we need to be confident we have recruited the right families and explored the impact of fostering on their family.

The assessment takes around 6 months, which gives us enough time as an agency to get to know you, and for you as an applicant to have enough time to adjust for the change in lifestyle. Throughout the process, you will always have someone there to answer any questions that you have, whether this is your dedicated assessor, the recruitment social worker that first visited you or, indeed, me!”

Team Fostering is a not-for-profit, independent fostering agency that operates across the North East, Yorkshire and East Midlands. The agency is dedicated to putting children’s futures first and does this by investing all surplus into providing services to foster carers and young people, providing training opportunities and comprehensive support, and offering foster carers a competitive package of fees and benefits.

To find out more, you can speak to Sam by: