Education at Three Circles Fostering
The Importance of Fostering and Education
Fostering plays a crucial role in providing a safe and supportive environment for children unable to live with their birth families. These children face many changes and uncertainties affecting many aspects of their lives, including their education and, ultimately, their life chances.
Education is of crucial significance. It represents a powerful tool for facilitating stability and offering children a consistent place to grow, learn, and thrive.
As we are all aware, children in foster care encounter a unique set of challenges. Being separated from their families and moving between different homes often creates instability and uncertainty. Many foster children experience interruptions in their education due to frequent moves, leading to gaps in their learning that can make it difficult to keep up with their peers, and realise their full potential.
Creating an Inclusive Educational Environment for Foster Children
To truly make a difference, it's important to create an inclusive care environment that promotes and meets the needs of foster children. This requires an understanding of the specific challenges they face and putting in place strategies to help them succeed.
Schools can play a huge role in recognising signs of trauma and understanding the impediments children face. Building strong, trusting relationships with foster children is key, helping them to feel more secure and connected within a culture that values diversity and inclusivity.
Since every foster child has their own unique background and set of experiences, a one-size-fits-all approach to education just won't cut it.
In an ideal world educational programs should be tailored to meet each child's needs. This might involve creating personalised learning plans that take into account a child's academic history, emotional well-being, and personal goals. To ensure foster children receive the educational support they need, it's essential to continue practices that address these challenges.
For children within the care system the aim should be to provide them with a ‘care experience’ that differs significantly from those of their predecessors, where education was rarely afforded any real priority and children themselves seriously underachieved. The challenge for professionals is to embrace the skills, aspirations and dreams of children who are far too often assumed to be incapable of levels of achievement routinely realised by the general school population.
For this to change foster care in the modern era needs to provide a different personal experience for children and young people. It requires recalibrating and the inclusion of services designed to maximise the opportunities for genuine achievement and success.
It is no more than children in the care system deserve.
The National Teaching & Advisory Service
Our partnership with The National Teaching & Advisory Service is a key component of the fostering service provided to our children and carers. This partnership will be further enhanced as Three Circles grows and acquires the financial resources to invest further into the education of our children.
We have much work to do.
Connect With Us
Are you interested in fostering? Contact us today on 01625 533 531!