A new recruitment hub has been launched to recruit urgently needed foster carers across Cumbria and Lancashire.

The Regional Fostering Recruitment and Retention Hub, created as part of a £1.2m successful regional bid between Blackburn with Darwen Council, Blackpool Council, Cumberland Council, Westmorland and Furness Council, and Lancashire County Council to boost foster care recruitment in the region.

Foster With Us, acts as a first point of contact for those interested in fostering to help them make an informed choice about how fostering could work for them.

With a dedicated and experienced team of fostering advisors available to speak to seven days a week, there will be ongoing support for each step of your application, including review and checks.

There is also a buddy scheme that provides regular check ins with existing foster carers and young people across the region and access to a wide range of free training.

The ethos behind Foster With Us is to put prospective foster carers first.

The hub has been created following the Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, which sees the government investing £36 million to help boost foster carer numbers across the country.

This will help ensure there are more foster carers available, ready to offer the right home, at the right time to children who need it.

This will be done by extending recruitment campaigns, providing support through the application process and extending the support offer to current foster carers with the Mockingbird Model.

There are many fantastic foster carers across country, however more are needed. Just in the north west alone 760 more foster carers are required, to meet the demand of record numbers of children entering the care system.

Currently across all five local authorities there are 152 children waiting for foster homes, aged between 0 and 18. Of these, 19 are sibling groups waiting for people to share their homes so they don’t have to be separated.

Children and young people need foster care for a wide range of reasons. They may have experienced family problems, abuse or neglect. For others, it might be their parents have a short-term illness, mental health issues, learning difficulties or problems with drug or alcohol misuse. Having a diverse pool of foster carers, from different backgrounds, increases the likelihood of finding suitable homes that can meet these individual needs of our children.

To provide the best possible support for our foster carers, Foster With Us is introducing the innovative Mockingbird model. The model brings together up to ten satellite foster families to form a constellation and at the heart of each constellation is a hub home where a specially recruited and trained foster carer supports all carers within the constellation.

This creates a community of foster carers and young people in care who have regular contact with each other, helping everyone involved to build new networks and relationships. In other areas, this has proven to improve placement stability for children in care, prioritise sibling connections, promote active child protection, support permanence and improve the support provided to foster carers.

Mockingbird, a global award winning and pioneering programme led by The Fostering Network in the UK, delivers sustainable foster care. It is an evidence-based model structured around the support and relationships an extended family provides.

The model nurtures the relationships between children, young people and foster families supporting them to build a resilient and caring community.

Led by a hub home carer and liaison worker, the constellation community offers vital peer support and guidance alongside social activities and sleepovers to strengthen relationships and permanence.

Foster With Us is supported by the Department for Education and has been shaped by children who have been in foster care.

Cllr Sue Sanderson, Cabinet Member Childrens Services, Education and Skills at Westmorland and Furness Council, said:

“We urgently need to recruit more foster carers for children across Cumbria and the new regional recruitment hub, Foster With Us, will help us to address the recruitment challenges our councils are currently facing.

“The new hub makes it easier than ever for people to find out more about becoming a foster carer in their local area and will work across our five local authority areas to ensure the best outcomes for children who need a foster home.

“At Westmorland and Furness Council we welcome people from all walks of life and all backgrounds into the fostering community, to make sure every child in foster care finds the right placement.

“Working with our partners across the region, we remain committed to cared for children being safe and having the love and opportunities we want for all our children.”

Cllr Emma Williamson,  Executive Member for Children and Family Wellbeing at Cumberland Council, said:

“For the first time, anyone considering fostering in the region will benefit from a unified support hub for prospective foster carers, with help available every step of the way. In Cumberland providing safe and loving homes for our cared for children is one of our most important priorities and we hope that by working with our partners across the region, we can ensure the best outcomes for children who need a foster home.

“There are more than 700 children and young people across Cumbria who are in the care of their local council. A shortage of foster carers mean that some of our most vulnerable children live out of the county and away from their school, friends and family and everything familiar to them.

“Foster With Us has been launched to provide crucial support to prospective carers when they need it most and to get the word out across our region that sharing your home can shape a child’s future for the better. If you are interested in being a foster carer, please get in touch.”

To find out more or to speak to one of the friendly Foster With Us team, please visit fosterwithus.org.uk or call 0300 019 0200.