Established in 1946 as a registered Charity, The Children’s Family Trust is a voluntary, not-for-profit child-care agency. It has a long and enviable record in looking after children in care and always puts the child’s interest first.

We currently operate in the West Midlands, North East, West Yorkshire and the South.

Our Ethos

The Trust specializes in permanent or long term fostering and has provided stability for children throughout its history, we call this family for life. We also specialize in providing foster homes for groups of siblings and over the years we have helped children achieve a start in life often denied to others in care.

We no longer only concentrate on family for life placements but now recruit Foster Carers who will look after children in the short term, provide specialist placements to parents with their babies, who might have a disability or where assessment is required to help decide the future care plan of a child.

We apply the same standards to all of our Foster Carers. Indeed our Foster Carers are our strongest recommendation and the biggest asset of the Trust. We recognise their commitment dedication and professionalism, providing as they do, the critical point of delivery of our work with children who may be insecure, unwanted, and abused. We are committed to finding, training and supporting the best Foster Carers available. We complement this with a professional team of social workers and specialists to help them work with the children in their care so that, from a stable base, the children will achieve their potential.

We provide Local Authorities a complete fostering service – not just a placement. Our work is characterized by the effort we make to offer each child a matched placement, which will be a positive experience, providing them with the opportunity to grow socially and emotionally and to achieve educationally.

What we offer

The Children’s Family Trust seeks to work in partnership with Local Authorities. The service we offer is based on our 60 years of experience and to ensure the standards expected of us we:

• set a particularly high standard for entrants to our Foster Carer team
• expect our Foster Carers to be professional in their work
• expect to visit each Carer a minimum of twice each month to provide super vision and support
• develop Carers trust and self-confidence through training and social work support
• undertake a careful matching process to ensure the stability of the placement
• encourage and support Foster Carers in gaining recognized qualifications
• encourage our Foster Carers to benefit from the wider support that participation in local Foster Carer networks can bring
• provide qualified social work staff with child care and child protection experience
• work in partnership with the Local Authority on each child’s care plan
• recognize the importance of education and support the child achieve their potential
• provide formal 24×7 telephone support 365 days per year from qualified social work staff
• maintain and support natural family relationships wherever appropriate and promote contact
• provide therapeutic support in agreement with the Local Authority where needed

Placements

The Children’s Family Trust currently offers the following placement types:

• a family for life – permanent and long-term foster placements
• bridging foster placements
• short-term foster placements
• foster placements for children with challenging behaviour
• foster placements for sibling groups
• parent and child foster placements (usually mother and baby)
• foster placements for children with disabilities
• respite care placements