Promoting Equality and Diversity
The Fostering Service aims to ‘ensure that children feel secure in their placements with carers appropriately trained, supported and capable of providing quality care to meet their needs and maximise their life chances. This will include ensuring that the child has a secure identity, making the most of educational opportunities as well as ensuring the child is healthy, emotionally well and enjoys a network of social relationships within which the child feels valued’.
To be able to do this Foster Carers need to build on the foundation training provided by the Introduction to Fostering Course which introduced you to the importance of a child or young person developing a positive sense of identity and the impact of prejudice, unfair discrimination and racism on children in the care system.
All Foster Carers are required to undertake the Core Training Programme modules ‘Valuing Diversity’’ and “Children with Additional Needs”. “Valuing Diversity” enables foster carers to develop their understanding of the different types of prejudice and discrimination which can affect children and young people. It will develop your understanding of why it is important to provide care which respects and preserves each child’s ethnic, religious, cultural, and linguistic background and will help foster carers to demonstrate how they can support and encourage children and young people to develop skills to deal with discrimination, enhance self worth and make a positive contribution. “Children with Additional Needs” provides Foster Carers with an understanding of the needs of children with disabilities, the similarities and differences between these and the needs of children without disabilities and the social model of disability. Foster carers development needs can be met further by attending continuous professional development modules such as “Identity”, ‘Sexuality Awareness’, “introduction to Special Educational Needs”, “Introduction to Autism” and “Introduction to Epilepsy”.
It is vitally important that all foster carers are able to recognise and challenge prejudice and discrimination and that foster carers can confidently support children and young people who experience prejudice and discrimination and are able to help them to develop their own skills to deal with discrimination. Foster carers need to be confident about accessing advice and support to ensure that they are able to meet the care needs of a child or young person who has a different racial, cultural or religious background to their own. A child’s needs should be clearly identified within their Care Plan and The Foster Placement Plan and Agreement should identify any support you need. This should be regularly reviewed with your Fostering Social Worker in supervision.
For more information about equality and diversity follow these links:
Staffordshire County Council Equality and Diversity
Equality and Human Rights Commission