Therapeutic training: HOMES
Our foster families give children the love, care and stability they desperately need.
Request your free guide to fostering todayOur fostering HOMES framework aims to build supportive homes for children who have experienced trauma and loss.
H: Helping to build and maintain connections
O: Outcomes focused and evidence based
M: Making sense together
E: Empowerment and working with
S: Safe, stable base
We make sure our foster carers are fully informed about the child or young person they will be caring for.
We know fostering is a big decision and understand that everyone’s situation is different. We’re here if you want to chat, ask questions or learn more.
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Action for Children is a proud member of The Fairer Fostering Partnership, a group of charitable and not-for-profit fostering agencies who work tirelessly for children.
At Action for Children Fostering, we provide safe, stable, supportive homes for children and young people who have a history of attachment disruption, abuse, neglect and trauma.
We believe it's really important to ensure that our foster carers are fully equipped to deal with children in their care that may have complex needs as a result of trauma.
We aim to provide safe and stable homes, where young people feel listened to and trusted.
We believe that it is important to empower our foster carers, work collaboratively with them and involve them in decision-making, ensuring that they have the necessary resources and skills to meet the needs of the children and young people they care for.
With regard to the wider service, we aim to establish joint goals and a common understanding through open, transparent communication, to respect the views of others, and to ensure a learning culture and celebrate success.
By developing a shared understanding of the young person, we provide a tailored plan to support their needs and build upon their strengths. The children and young people that we support (age range 4-18 years) have often had life experiences resulting in:
- developmental trauma
- histories of attachment disruption
- neglect
- ongoing attachment/relational needs
- trauma-related needs
- executive functioning difficulties
- vulnerability within relationships
- social communication difficulties (e.g. Autistic Spectrum conditions)
Children and young people may present with a range of complex and high-risk behaviours including self-harm or suicidal behaviours, eating difficulties, shame behaviours (e.g. soiling, smearing), difficulties accessing/exclusion from educational settings, physical and verbal aggression, sexually uninhibited behaviours, and offending behaviours.
Developed in conjunction with Changing Minds UK, our unique training framework, HOMES, gives foster carers at Action for Children Fostering the peace of mind knowing they've learned the necessary skills to understand and manage challenging situations.
Our foster carers have access to exceptional training and supervision in therapeutic parenting, with access to professional clinical psychologists. We plan and deliver training with our foster carers to ensure their ongoing professional development.
Action for Children Social Worker
Our collaboration with Changing Minds UK provides specialist psychological input to support our young people and their carers.
Together with their team of psychologists, our HOMES framework was developed to meet children’s trauma history and emotional needs using the latest, most effective approaches.
This service provides ongoing psychological consultation, formulation, training and guidance for foster carers and the wider care team. This is to ensure that a therapeutic, evidence-informed framework is used to support the young people and their carers.
We recognise that relationships and a sense of belonging within the fostering system is integral for young people, foster carers and the fostering team.
We aim to develop trusting, compassionate relationships and provide a high level of attuned, sensitive recommendations to support this process. One of the core principles of the framework is that, foster carers, alongside the young person, are at the centre of the intervention.
We help foster carers to recognise the key role they have in developing the environment and relationships that can manage risk. This will then help the young person to feel safe and facilitate change.
We recognise the importance of ensuring that the service we provide is regularly evaluated and outcomes are monitored.
We capture each young person’s individual journey from the onset, measuring and monitoring areas of strength and difficulty, to ensure that Therapeutic Action Plans can be tailored accordingly. Such outcomes allow us to work towards realistic, collaborative goals, to notice change and to record evidence of overall therapeutic progress. This provides a forum to celebrate achievements and success.
From the onset, we aim to adopt a collaborative, curious approach when understanding our young people and their journey. To facilitate this, we value working closely with other professionals and agencies in order to develop a shared understanding of the young person.
We promote strong systems of communication, with a consistent plan and agreed way of supporting the young person. This approach can then create an inclusive, partnership way of working.
We adopt a person-centred approach, where we work alongside our foster carers as a team. We aim to reduce inherent power imbalances with our foster carers, young people and staff; ensuring that communication is clear, honest and transparent and they're involved in decision-making processes.
It's important that we listen to the voices of our young people and foster carers, enabling them to collaboratively set realistic aims and expectations for their young person and the ongoing therapeutic work. This may include having ‘tough conversations’ at times and supporting other professionals to do this where appropriate.
In addition, we encourage our young people to be part of their care planning/Therapeutic Action Plan and support this process in an innovative and creative manner.
Action for Children Fostering recognises the importance of a nurturing, stable, safe environment for our young people, foster carers and staff. We understand that stability and security within an attachment relationship is fundamental for a young person’s emotional and social development.
We aim to welcome our young people into supportive, stable home environments. Providing a safe, stable base is also the crucial foundation needed to develop trusting and meaningful relationships in the future.
Our multi-disciplinary team all work directly with the young person to support their Therapeutic Action Plan.
All of our staff are trained in attachment and developmental trauma and multiple therapeutic techniques such as PACE (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, Empathy). This aligns perfectly with our ethos of ‘connection before correction’ which promotes an understanding of the young person and their views on the situation before attempting correction.
