Fostering young parents or parent and child fostering, comes in many different shapes and forms. At Unity Foster Care we will structure our support to you, to enable you to care for the many different kinds of young parent fostering you may want to consider. We’ll try and give you a brief summary of the types of parent and child fostering that can be requested: Young baby with a 14-year-old mother Unborn baby and mother A baby and a parent who is over 18 years. Single father and a baby Two parents and a baby The above is just a brief example of the many kinds of young parent fostering that can take place. The backgrounds to these parents can be equally varied, in that the parent may be single or with a partner, the baby may be born or unborn at time of placement, the parent may still be a child under 18yrs or an adult. As well as the different types of young people or parents placed, your role as a foster carer can also be very different in each situation. In some instances, the foster carer role is to advise and guide the parents when it has been identified they may be lacking the skills and abilities to manage without this support. In other situations, the parent and child may be placed with you as part of a formal court assessment, this would be to help inform the outcomes of care proceedings. You may even be asked to attend court to give evidence, whether what you have to say is in support of the parent or not. The ultimate aim of these processes is to identify how the best outcomes for the child will be achieved and with whom. The formal assessments can sound scary to someone new to this role, but the decisions made won’t be based purely on your reports and will be taken into consideration with a lot of other reports. And don’t worry about attending Court, we will be with you every step of the way. We’ve taken some time to try and explain a little more about fostering a young parent, because ultimately it will be up to you to decide what role you undertake and what age ranges you are willing to support. You don’t have to have parenting experience to care for parent and child foster placements. We have taken many people with no experience of this and have provided training and support to enable them to achieve the skills required to undertake this role. It really is up to you how far you go. As with all fostering, your home accommodation will need to be suitable to meet the needs of both the parent and the child (who may or may not share their parents’ room). You will need the basic requirements of a spare room and sufficient space in the living areas for the parent to be observed, guided and supported. Some of our carers provide only parent and child placements and no other type of fostering. If you would like to learn more or have a chat about fostering with young parents, feel free to give us a call. We’d love to hear from you.