How It Works

Applying to foster takes months rather than weeks, and most of the work sits in the first stage, at a pace you set. Here is the whole journey — from the first conversation to the day a child arrives.

The seven steps

  1. Before you apply. Read about the role, talk it through with everyone who lives with you, and with the people who would support you.
  2. The free quiz. About fifteen minutes, no obligation. It tells us the sort of children you could care for.
  3. Your application. A Sparks manager supports you through the paperwork and the training. Around 48 hours in all: 17 hours of training, 26 hours on your own application, and five check-ins with the assessment manager. At three hours a week that is about sixteen weeks, and less if you can do more.
  4. Checks. Police, local authority and reference checks go out as soon as you have given us the details and your consent.
  5. Your assessment. A qualified social worker picks up your part-written application. Four meetings — two online calls and two visits to your home — around nine to twelve hours together.
  6. Fostering panel. At least five people from different backgrounds, most of them independent of Sparks, read your assessment and make a recommendation.
  7. The decision. The agency decision maker calls you within two working days and writes to you within five.

Before you apply

Read around the role. Most of what you need is on this website, and it stays useful long after approval. Then talk it through with everyone who lives with you, and with the people who would support you, so you know they are behind it.

Be realistic about time. The assessment runs over several months and asks for a few hours a week. You will be supported to build your understanding as you go, so you do not need to know everything before you start — but you do need the capacity to engage with it.

Nothing. You are not asked to pay for your application, your assessment or your approval. Money should not be what stops someone fostering.

There can be costs along the way. If you do not have a laptop or a similar device you would need one, for video calls and for filling in documents. If something in your home does not pass the health and safety check, putting it right may cost you.

We give £1,500 to every household after approval. It covers what you spent getting ready, and helps you prepare the home for a child arriving.

Getting assessed

The assessment is the longest part of the process, and the part people worry about most. In practice it is a series of conversations, backed by the checks every fostering agency has to make.

Several, and they do different jobs. Some confirm who you are. Police and local authority checks are safeguarding checks. Personal and employment references help us understand you as a person.

Checks and interviews cannot tell us everything, and social work practice asks us to hold what is called respectful uncertainty — however well a social worker gets on with a carer, they keep asking questions and keep gathering information. It is not suspicion of you; it is how the job is done properly. It runs both ways: your social worker’s part is to build enough trust that you feel safe telling them difficult things.

A qualified social worker spends several hours with you, over more than one session, going through your life — your background, your relationships, your strengths and the things you find hard.

Some of it is very personal. If you have experienced abuse or other trauma you will be asked to talk about it, and that is not easy. Your assessor’s job is to build a working relationship that makes it possible.

If you are unsure whether something is relevant, share it. Holding something back usually does more damage to the assessment than the thing itself — if we feel we are not getting an open account, that can bring the assessment to an end.

It happens. At any stage an assessment can be paused, sent back to an earlier stage, or stopped, depending on what comes to light.

If your assessment is stopped after a social worker has been allocated and you disagree with that, we will point you to the Independent Review Mechanism, which gives an independent view on decisions to end an assessment.

Panel and approval

Panel is at least five people from different backgrounds and different sectors, most of them independent of Sparks. They read your assessment, ask about anything missing or unclear, and recommend whether you should be approved.

The decision itself sits with the agency decision maker, a senior manager here, who more often than not agrees with panel.

Your report has already been checked by a manager before it gets there, so most are approved without conditions. Panel can ask for something to be clarified, or defer for more work. They can turn an application down — but if we thought that was a real risk, you would know before the day.

You attend panel with your assessing social worker. If you are applying on your own and the thought of it worries you, you can bring a friend as an advocate.

Your approval range is what you are approved to offer — the ages, and the kinds of arrangement.

Sparks carers offer emergency care, respite while another carer has a break, short term of a few months, and long term, which can run to eighteen and beyond. Some offer homes to children with no additional needs identified, some to children with disabilities, some to remand arrangements, and some to parent and child.

Your range is set by your skills, your experience and your capacity — not by a standard template.

You need at least one spare bedroom, and the rest of the home must not be overcrowded.

Every child over three should have their own room. Two children over three can share only if they are the same sex, have already shared for more than six months, and both say they would rather share.

Room size decides the rest. A room with space for one single bed and a wardrobe is approved for one child. A room with space for a bunk bed, or two singles with proper storage, may be approved for two siblings.

The usual limit is three unrelated children, and more spare rooms may mean more children. It can go above three for a larger sibling group or other exceptional circumstances.

Space is not the only factor. Your experience, knowledge and capacity count too — a single carer new to fostering, with limited experience of children, would not be approved at the top of the range.

Once you are approved

Approval is the start, not the finish. From here it is about finding the right child for your household, and making the first days as steady as they can be.

A child’s social worker or placement team sends us a profile. We look at which of our carers are free, who lives close enough to the child’s school, and who could make family time work.

Then the detail: your approved age range, your experience, and where ethnicity, religion or language matter to the child. Experienced carers are matched more often than newly approved ones. For specialist arrangements such as parent and child, we look hard at whether the household can safeguard what is being asked.

We talk the referral through with you. You are never obliged to say yes, though a refusal needs a reason we can stand behind.

We then send the profiles of all available carers back, and the child’s social worker decides which, if any, fit. Ideally you and the child would meet several times first. More often the child moves in within a few hours of the match being agreed, which is why carers need to be alive to how frightening a sudden move is.

You prepare a welcome pack before they come — something that suits their age, a colouring book for a younger child, a journal for an older one.

You are trained to talk with a child about the move and help them settle, whether they stay a night or years. Small things carry weight. Some children have come from homes where they were not allowed to take food from the kitchen; unless their social worker says otherwise, children in our homes can help themselves to food when they want it.

What matters most is that the home is experienced as safe — a place where they are protected, and where what they say is listened to and acted on. A child who has only known poor treatment will take time to trust you, and there will be difficult feelings to work through. You are supported through that. You are not expected to manage it alone.

Already fostering elsewhere

Yes, and you can ask about it without committing to anything. Call us for a confidential, no-obligation conversation — you do not have to tell your current provider you have spoken to us until you have decided to move. If you want impartial advice about a problem where you are, we are happy to give it, even if you end up staying.

A transfer assessment is much shorter than your first one. It uses what your current provider already holds, adds a reference from them, and a Sparks social worker writes an update.

If you have children placed, the expectation is that they stay with you and that the disruption to them is minimal. Your current allowance is honoured and may be increased — we would discuss that when you apply.

You could be welcoming a child to your home soon

Apply to Foster Now

Or call 07920 097 834  ·  [email protected]