Welcome and introduction from the Director of Children’s Services

Neil MacDonald

Welcome to the Foster Carers Learning and Development Brochure, 2024 – 2025.

Becoming a foster parent is an amazing opportunity to give a child or young person the fresh start they need. It takes a huge amount of courage to start your fostering journey, but caring for a child is one of the most rewarding things.

It is the relationship with a Carer that very often makes the real difference to the lives of our children who are looked after by the local authority. Coventry values the diligent work of its Foster Carers, therefore, is keen to support them every step of the way.

In Coventry Children’s Services we place children at the heart of everything we do. We pride ourselves on being a learning organisation and are proactive in helping both employees and our foster parents to develop their skills, knowledge, and experience. We are committed to providing high quality training programmes that are accessible and relevant to all our foster carers.

I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the ongoing hard work and support by the foster carers provided to our children looked after. I am delighted to announce the ongoing training and development offer to our foster carers.  The Foster Care Learning and Development Brochure offers a comprehensive choice of courses, some delivered by Practitioners from the Fostering Service and other external trainers, all of whom are experts in their field.

You will note that some of many of the sessions will be delivered jointly with Supervising Social Workers, Children’s Social Workers, and staff across Children’s Services. This is part of the commitment to deliver a ‘team around the child’ approach to all looked after children and young people, relationships will be strengthened and the learning that we all take from the children we look after will be shared.

The training courses have been arranged up to March 2025 and include a mix of face to face and virtual courses and an e-learning offer to vary your development opportunities.

Please attend any courses that are beneficial to you and speak to your Supervising Social Worker regularly about any further training and development needs.

I am proud of what we are achieving in Coventry with children and families we work with, and I am committed to strengthening Children’s Services further on our journey to excellence.

Neil MacDonald
Director of Children’s Services