What is therapeutic fostering?
Children who come into care may have experienced trauma, loss, neglect or repeated changes in the adults around them. These experiences can affect how safe the world feels and how easy it is to trust, accept care or manage strong emotions.
Therapeutic foster parents are supported to look beyond behaviour, stay curious about what a child may be communicating and build relationships that are predictable, nurturing and capable of supporting change.
Quick overview
What is fostering?
Providing a safe, temporary or long-term nurturing home for a child who cannot live with their birth family.
Key responsibilities:
Types of fostering:
Emergency, Short-term, Long-term, Short-break, and Parent & Child.
Got Questions?
Book a discovery chat with a member of our team at a time that suits you.
Therapeutic does not mean turning your home into a clinic
It means recognising that children’s experiences shape how safe the world feels, how they interpret other people and how they respond when emotions become overwhelming. Behaviour that looks challenging on the surface may be communicating fear, uncertainty, shame, loss or an unmet need.
A therapeutic foster parent learns to stay curious about what might be underneath the behaviour and to use the relationship itself as part of helping the child feel safer.
Why is therapeutic fostering needed?
Almost all young people in care would have experienced some form of relational trauma. This is trauma relating to your close relationships and can only be addressed and healed by relational repair which means forming safe, predictable relationships with care givers.
Trauma is the emotional response to bad experiences. Trauma is not the experience itself, but the individual response to it. That’s why what may be traumatic to some, isn’t to others.
Hear child and adolescent expert psychotherapist, Wendy, discuss how past traumas can affect the way a young person experiences the world in the video below:
The Flourish model
What this changes for foster parents
- You receive specialist training before and throughout fostering.
- You can draw on in-house therapeutic expertise when a situation needs deeper reflection.
- Your social worker and therapy team can think together rather than operating in separate worlds.
- Support focuses on understanding and relationships, not simply managing behaviour.
- You are encouraged to reflect on difficult moments without blame or judgement.
How is therapeutic fostering different to standard fostering?
The difference between a therapeutic foster parent and a standard foster parent is typically their level of training and application of therapeutic practice. Being therapeutic in approach comes natural to many foster parents, but specialist training helps foster parents understand and utilise techniques so that they are able to consistently provide therapeutic care and support, no matter how stressful a situation may be.
Interested in more differences?
Change a child's life as a therapeutic foster parent.
Speak to us confidentially about fostering