Recruitment, Screening and Training of Potential Foster Carers:.
• Initial assessment to make sure the person is suitable: of appropriate age (25), have a stable home environment, have not had a major illness or trauma in past 12 months, be physically, emotionally and financially stable, be able to provide young person with their own room and storage space.
• Talk to potential carer about following issues to ensure they think they can handle situation: 1. your skills base to deal with difficult behaviours.
2. identify potential issues in each scenario.
3. personal preferences - gender, age of the child etc.
4. your family situation, age of your own children, transport, space etc.
5. if the length of placement suits you (consider holidays, family commitments etc).
6. consider other member/s of your family and their wishes.
7. what info would you require from the departmental officer to enable you to make your decision?.
8. how comfortable you feel to say to the departmental worker that you would not be able to accept the placement - consider if you would feel pressured to say yes when you really did not feel that you could accept the placement?.
9. discuss how you could ensure that you did not accept a placement that you were not comfortable with.
• Provide training to potential foster carers on how to look after kids in foster care. What behaviours to expect. Training starts with orientation and the progresses to on-going training on different topics to enable you to update your skills with current trends in foster care. Qld has no specific extra training for carers who are looking after kids who have been sexually abused but some community centres offer training on it, so good S.W. would either provide this training or find an agency that does and link the carer up to this.
• Provide info about foster caring, assistance in accessing appropriate services.