Fostering Training Courses

We offer more training than any other provider. Each year (on top of mandatory training) we offer more than 20 courses that are essential and relevant learning. These are completely free, high-quality, flexible and straightforward. The courses are designed to give you valuable skills and help you feel secure in your fostering work.

Therapeutic Training

All By the Bridge Foster Parents recieve therepeutic training to help them understand more about therapeutic fostering and how to create a therapeutic environment for foster children and young people. When Foster Parents have completed this training they will be able to:

• Distinguish between therapeutic fostering and therapy
• Identify how they can provide a therapeutic environment for children
• Recognise when they are intervening in ways that have a therapeutic effect for children and young people 

The therapeutic training courses will help with behaviour management, understanding into why children do what they do (triggers, patterns), how behaviour can be communication and helpful in developing skills – listening, empathy, genuineness, acceptance etc.

Training Course and Workshops

Examples of the many optional training courses and workshops that we offer are:

Barriers to Attachment

this course guides foster parents through the theory of attachments: how they are formed and what happens when a child goes through their early years without a secure attachment figure. She will explore the barriers to attachment that commonly occur with children and young people who are fostered.

Child Development & Adolescence

This training course explains the healthy stages of development, the impact of early trauma or deprivation and how to provide for the consequences. Raising awareness the relevance to therapeutic childcare and the role of  a Foster Parent.

Fostering from the Inside Out

Run by people who used to be in care, this workshop provides insight into the internal world of a child in care. Speakers will reflect on their care journeys, share what happened to them and make links to belonging and self-worth. This course is designed to help people empathise with children and view them in a different light instead of just “naughty” children with “bad behaviour”.

Managing Social Media  

This training course looks through the minefield of e-safety. The training looks beyond the mere risks to explore some of the complexities around involvement in issues such as online bullying, self-generated sexual imagery, online child sexual exploitation etc. as well as exploring the psychology behind how technology can impact upon the behaviour of a child.