SPRINGFIELD FOSTERING STATEMENT OF PURPOSE 2025

Introduction

Springfield Fostering Agency is a newly formed agency and was established in April 2025  comprising of a diverse professional team of whom have significant ‘hands-on knowledge and experience’ in the fostering industry. This experience enables us to focus on ensuring that foster carers receive the support, training and guidance they need to provide outstanding care for the children placed with them.

Springfield Fostering Agency is an independent fostering agency that will provide safe, comprehensive care to children and young people aged between 0-18 years old. This high standard of care will be achieved through a multi-disciplined approach to fostering, aligned to respond to the diverse range of children currently in the care system.

Springfield Fostering Agency will provide support to all children within fostering with a aim to improve their potential and outcomes. This will be achieved through personalised support and mentoring including bespoke care packages delivered by an experienced team that includes trained foster carers, highly experienced supervising social workers.

This Statement of Purpose aims to provide comprehensive information to various stakeholders, including:

• Individuals involved in the fostering service
• Approved or prospective Foster Carers
• Children placed with Foster Carers by the fostering service and their parents
• Local Authority partners and relevant stakeholders
• OFSTED/Chief Inspector

The Statement of Purpose, formulated in alignment with Fostering Services Regulations, incorporates:

• Clear aims and objectives of the fostering service.
• Detailed description of the services and facilities offered by the fostering service.

The Statement of Purpose and the services offered have been formulated in compliance with relevant legislation and guidance.

Our Statement of Purpose and service provision adhere strictly to the following legislation and guidance:

• The Children Act 1989
• The Children Act 2004
• The Care Standards Act 2000
• The Fostering Services Regulations (England 2011) (Amendments 2013)
• The National Minimum Standards for Fostering Services (England 2011)
• The Care Planning and Fostering (England) Regulations 2010 (Amendments 2013) (Miscellaneous Amendments 2015)
• Working together to Safeguard Children 2018 and other relevant national frameworks.

Mission Statement

At Springfield Fostering, our mission is to provide a nurturing, supportive, and safe environment for children and young people in need of care outside their birth families and to ensure every child has access to a stable, loving home where they can grow, thrive, and achieve their full potential.

The Aims and Objectives are:

• Fulfil our mission by delivering high-quality care for children and young people in our care.
• Ensure all placements with foster carers meet rigorous statutory regulations and national standards.
• Support our foster carers with comprehensive training, on-going support, and access to necessary resources.
• Promote fostering in a positive light and cultivate a community of skilled and compassionate carers.
• Facilitate collaborative relationships among carers, professionals, agencies, and families involved in children’s lives.
• Continuously enhance agency standards through proactive feedback and continuous improvement.

Objectives Include:

• Implement policies, practices, and procedures that align with legislative requirements and promote best practices.
• Provide safe, nurturing family environments that meet each child’s individual needs and promote their best interests as outlined in their care plans.
• Ensure round-the-clock support is available for carers, children, and young people under our care.
• Safeguard children from all forms of abuse, neglect, exploitation, and deprivation.
• Promote diversity, equality, and respect for each child’s cultural, ethnic, religious, linguistic background, as well as gender, sexuality, and any disabilities they may have.
• Support each child’s identity and individuality development.
• Enhance each child’s overall health and well-being, including their physical, mental, and emotional welfare.
• Foster educational achievement and lifelong learning opportunities.
• Actively seek and incorporate children’s views and opinions, alongside those of their families and carers, into our service planning and delivery.
• Recruit foster carers from diverse backgrounds to meet the wide-ranging needs of children requiring placements.
• Maintain rigorous standards in carer recruitment, assessment, and ongoing support.
• Facilitate and support contact between children and their families and friends as outlined in their care plans.
• Prepare children for adulthood by developing essential life skills and nurturing lasting relationships.
• Utilise an Independent Panel to assess and recommend on approvals, reviews, or terminations of carer approvals.
• Provide consistent supervision, support, and information to foster carers.
• Offer accessible online and face-to-face training opportunities to develop carers’ skills and knowledge to better meet children’s needs.
• Ensure optimal matching of children with foster carers based on carers’ skills, experiences, and circumstances.
• Regularly review placement stability to ensure ongoing support packages meet current needs, minimising potential for placement breakdown and adverse outcomes for children.
• Maintain compliance with regulatory bodies and ensure financial stability and good practice within the agency.
• Efficiently manage agency resources to deliver the highest standard of service and ensure children’s safety.
• Provide up-to-date training to support workers and panel members to maintain high-quality standards.
• Conduct regular monitoring and reviews of agency policies, procedures, and practices.
• Uphold secure, separate, and accurate records of children, carers, and staff, ensuring accessibility in accordance with legislative requirements.

Status and Constitution:

Management structure includes the Responsible Individual and Registered Manager:

• The Responsible Individual oversees strategic direction and financial management.
• The Registered Manager manages day-to-day operations.
• The Agency Decision Maker makes final decisions based on recommendations from the Independent Panel.

Management Objectives and Quality Assurance:

• Develop strategic vision and direction.
• Cultivate a child-centred culture based on values and principles.
• Ensure quality assurance and continuous improvement.
• Create an annual business plan aligned with the needs of children and service users.
• Adapt services in response to new legislative and regulatory requirements.
• Manage finances to provide best value for local authorities.

Types of Fostering

Springfield Fostering facilitates safe and loving care, provided in foster carers’ homes, for children and young people of all ages up to 18 years. This includes individuals and sibling groups.

Emergency Fostering

Some carers can accept children arriving in an emergency, where the carer’s role would be to provide a place of safety and meet the immediate needs of the child. Springfield Fostering operates a system of 24-hour support for fostering families.

Short-Term Fostering

Carers can provide a home for a shorter time while social workers and courts determine how best to support a child or young person, by providing foster carers who understand the uncertainty experienced by children and their families during the assessment and court process, and who can facilitate increased and regular family contact.

Bridging and Short Breaks Fostering

Springfield Fostering recruits carers who will work with children and birth families towards preparing for adoption or during other times of transition, such as a move being planned to another home, or working to specific plans aimed at supporting Children in Care to move back home to their families or into independence. Some of our carers will also be able to support children having a short break when needed.

Fostering Siblings

Springfield Fostering is committed to ensuring that, where possible, siblings can live together. We offer homes to sibling groups and aim to have more carers who are able to take larger sibling groups to ensure that children do not need to be separated for practical reasons. Where this is not possible, Springfield Fostering will strive to ensure that children from sibling groups can live as close as possible geographically to be able to spend sibling time together. Springfield Fostering will invite siblings who do not live with our carers to our family days out, when possible.

Fostering Children with a Disability

Foster carers will be assessed for their suitability and skills to care for a child with a disability. Appropriate training will be provided to carers to enable them to meet the needs of each child and understand the additional safeguarding required to keep children and young people living with disabilities safe. The knowledge of specialist professionals will be sought to support carers in fulfilling this role.

Long-Term Matched Fostering

Springfield Fostering provides carers who are approved to offer long-term homes and, wherever possible, will assist Local Authorities in finding and/or assessing long-term foster carers for a specific known child. If an existing short-term arrangement is likely to be agreed as a long-term home, the agency will undertake to consider how the carers will meet the long-term needs of the child and will participate in the formation of a permanency report, which will be presented to the Local Authority permanency panel.

Teenagers and Preparation for Independence

Springfield Fostering is committed to improving outcomes for care leavers. All the good work carried out by foster parents can be undermined if effective plans are not made for moving a child or young person on to independence. Our foster carers are guided, trained, and supported to help young people make the transition to independence. We aim to work creatively with Local Authorities, children, young people, and foster carers to ease the transition to independence. The Pathway Plans developed by the placing Local Authority provide a formal structure for this work. Staying Put arrangements will be planned for and encouraged when appropriate.

Support for Foster Carers

Springfield Fostering respects and values the work foster carers do and recognises that foster carers have personal expertise and make the biggest difference in the everyday lives of children and young people in care. Consequently, we provide a bespoke service to support each family in further supporting children/young people and their foster carers. The process of identifying and arranging the necessary level of support starts when a child/young person and foster family are ‘matched’ at the placement planning stage and is adjusted and monitored through open communication and continued assessment of need.

Springfield Fostering offers the following support to all our foster carers:

• Access to Springfield Fostering support services 24 hours a day, all year round.
• Supervision and support from dedicated, qualified, and suitably experienced staff.
• Springfield Fostering supervising social worker.
• Frequent visits and regular telephone contact from the Agency.
• Short breaks arrangements when a carer needs support.
• Support from an independent specialist when additional needs are identified.
• Family Support workers to work with children and young people.
• TDS training.
• A level of financial support that values the skills of foster carer(s), making additional payments for birthdays, celebrations, and holidays.
• Each fostering family will have their own support networks. The identified people will be “enhanced” DBS checked and interviewed by the agency to ensure they are clear of their roles and responsibilities when caring for children in the absence of the foster carer.
• Dedicated Foster Carer Support Groups.
• Bespoke training packages.

Children and young people referred to the agency may have experienced many rejections, and Springfield Fostering attempts to minimise this happening again. Foster carers joining Springfield Fostering will be supported in their resilience in building sound relationships with children and offering nurturing and loving homes. For these reasons, we recognise the value of good, high-quality, relevant, and responsive support.

Recruitment of Foster Carers

At Springfield Fostering, we have an ongoing programme of recruitment, using word of mouth, the internet, and local advertisements. Enquiries and applications to foster with us are always welcomed, both from those considering fostering for the first time and those transferring from other agencies.

We aim to recruit foster carers who share our ethos of open communication, are committed to Safeguarding, and are willing to welcome children and young people into their families, while working therapeutically and professionally with the team around each child. Applications to foster will be considered regardless of gender, marital status, sexuality, race, disability, religion and culture, or employment status. Our assessment and approval process fully complies with the Assessment and Approval of Foster Carers: Amendments to the Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations. Volume 4: Fostering Services July 2013 Review of Approval.

All foster carers will be presented to panel within three months of their first annual review. They will continue to be reviewed annually, returning to panel every fifth year. Approval may be reviewed sooner, or at panel, if their approval needs to be reviewed due to the foster carer’s medical concerns, concerns about the foster carer’s practice, serious breaches of the foster carer’s agreement, allegations, resignations, or significant changes in the household composition.

Learning and Development

Springfield Fostering considers training and support to be essential for all staff and foster carers, equipping them with a sound knowledge base and strategies for practically offering attuned and therapeutic home environments, as well as life chances for children and young people who are fostered with us. We provide statutory and mandatory training packages for all, as well as identifying individual and tailored training for staff, foster carers, and children. Carers will be supported to complete their Training Support and Development Standards portfolio within the legislated timescales.

Compliments and Complaints

We aim always to provide a service with integrity and care. At Springfield Fostering, we view complaints, comments, and compliments as an opportunity to improve our services. Your feedback will form vital information to inform the future policy and planning of our service. We would like to work in partnership with everyone we work with, in the development of Springfield Fostering’s service. We are committed to resolving any worries or concerns and to finding positive outcomes.

Springfield Fostering has a clear complaints procedure, which is made available to staff, foster carers, young people, and all stakeholders. All complaints will be thoroughly and swiftly addressed.

Allegations

In all cases when there are concerns regarding abuse or neglect, the Local Authority Safeguarding Children Multi-Agency Partnership procedures will be followed. The alleged staff member, or foster carer, will be informed of the substance of an allegation as soon as possible, following advice from the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO).

There may be instances when the information cannot be shared fully, so as not to compromise the investigation. Investigations will take place by an independent social worker and/or the police, if deemed necessary.

When a foster carer has had an allegation made against them, they will be referred to the fostering panel for a review. The Registered Manager will confirm in writing to the foster carer the recommendation that will be made to the panel, along with a copy of the report. Foster carers will be invited to attend the panel meeting.

Foster carers undergoing investigation are strongly advised to access independent advice and support from The Fostering Network. Independent support through supervision should continue, as will the support provided to the foster carer’s birth children, regardless of whether the allegation has been made against them. Support offered will include helping foster carers to understand the process, ensuring they are given all appropriate information, and assisting them in their communication with other agencies. In cases when a serious allegation is substantiated, due consideration will be given to whether this should be referred to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Staff Recruitment

We aim to ensure that we have sufficient staff in place to deliver the service to the standards set out in this document. To this end, Springfield Fostering will limit our supervising social workers’ caseloads and carefully monitor all eventualities to safeguard our provision and promise to provide the best bespoke support possible.

Robust, safer recruitment procedures are undertaken for every member of staff, where their experience, skills, and suitability for each post will be assessed. Appropriate DBS checks are carried out for all members of staff, without exception.

Springfield Fostering will commit to relevant post-qualifying training for social workers to ensure they are kept abreast of all current trends, legislation, and regulations. Annual appraisals are undertaken to identify gaps in knowledge or skill base, to ensure appropriate training is given at all levels. Their training is in line with continuous professional development requirements, including their continued registration as a social worker through Social Work England.

Quality supervision with all members of staff is provided regularly to ensure that all staff feel safe and are suitably equipped with the knowledge of their roles. Our staff team will play a crucial role in the delivery of the bespoke service we are committed to offering our children and families, and they will equally be afforded the support and respect required to feel valued. Springfield Fostering will aim to assist all team members in achieving a good work/life balance.

Company Structure

Springfield Fostering Agency has been established by a Director, to whom the Registered Manager is responsible. The Registered Manager is responsible for the day-to-day running of the organisation, including the appointment of staff, commissioning services to support delivery, as well as working with commissioning authorities.