Why Chrysalis Care ?

Children benefit from the close partnership working between their foster carers, staff of the fostering service and other professionals. Communication between the parties is consistent and effective. This supports the coordination of children’s care and their safe, positive experiences and progress. - Ofsted, 2023

Chrysalis Care Fostering London - Why Chrysalis Care

Since 1997, Chrysalis Care has established itself as an excellent foster care provider established by a family with fifteen year’s prior fostering experience. We have developed strong and sustained partnerships with Local Authorities in and around London, Kent, Bedfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and the home counties gaining ‘preferred provider’ status. 

Firstly, our mission statement at Chrysalis Care is to ensure that our foster carers and staff provide a stable and secure home that safeguards children’s welfare, promotes positive relationships, improves education and life chances, transforming the lives of children and young people. We aim to achieve this with every child by supporting our foster carers with comprehensive training alongside our child centred and experienced team.  Ofsted agree that “The fostering service provides good-quality care. Children develop secure attachments with their foster families and have a strong sense of belonging. Outcomes for children are positive, and they have good experiences.(2023).

We are always looking for foster carers with the right approach, time and space. We will always make sure that we are there every step of the way through their fostering career and ensure that they are well trained and supported to make placements work.

How does Chrysalis care Support our foster carers?

– Every foster carer will have their own supervising social worker. Your social worker will provide you with support and advice via monthly visits to foster carer’s homes, unannounced visits, annual reviews, other meetings and they are always just a phone call away. Our foster carers make up a big part of our team and, we want to be there for them whether that be for professional advice or just a chance to offload and have a well needed chat.

– Every social worker has to rest so when they do, we have our out of hours support service. We always have a qualified social worker available by phone 24/7 every day of the year. They are there to offer advice and support (even if it’s 2 o’clock in the morning) as well as to offer emergency placements on behalf of local authorities.

– We provide a comprehensive learning and development program. We provide a wide range of training courses to enable carers to continuously develop and progress within their fostering role. We run our training to meet the needs of our carers to ensure we always remain up to date with current subjects and legislation.

– Financial allowances – A common question is, do I get financial support when I become a foster carer? We understand it is not an easy question to ask, but at the end of the day we need to know that when we place a child or young person in your care the placement is secure. At Chrysalis Care our foster carers receive a fostering allowance towards the care of the child, for example food, clothing, household bills in order to ensure a safe and stable home environment. We also provide an allowance directly to the carer too, this Is in recognition of the day to day commitment of caring for and transforming a young person’s life.

– Start up grant – We understand that when starting your fostering journey, you may need a boost to ensure you can provide a safe and nurturing space for your first child or young person you care for. To acknowledge this, we offer what we call a ‘start up grant’. This grant could help you to update your spare bedroom or purchase other furnishings, to create a warm and welcoming environment.  You may need to update your technical equipment, to carry out your record keeping duties and to access all of the learning and development courses and tools that will help you develop your skills and knowledge. We are committed to providing the highest quality of foster care for children and young people and with our start up grant, we can support you to give the best care possible.

– We look forward to our Award Ceremony every year. We think it is extremely important to acknowledge and reward our carer’s length of service to Chrysalis Care and achievements in transforming the lives of children and young people in foster care. We also love to celebrate and recognise the accomplishments of all of our children and young carers. This event is a great chance to get the whole team together under one roof to reflect and enjoy each other’s company.

– Support from our Children’s services team. We are extremely proud of our children’s services team and what they achieve year on year. Their aim is to engage and support the children in our care, whether it be 1 -1 mentoring for all ages and designing the sessions to meet the needs of the child. Our Children’s Services Team are instrumental in ensuring that these events and occasions are a great success.

– Support groups and learning for our carers are held in different areas in and around London and Kent, day time and evening and offering mutual support, sharing good practice and building good working relationships with eachother. “Support is brilliant here. Everyone’s friendly, they’re always in contact to help sort things out. The support groups are useful and important” (Foster carer, Ofsted report 2019).

– Holiday homes – Fostering is a wonderful lifestyle choice as well as an amazing role to undertake. We want to enable our foster carers to create some fun-filled memories together with the children and young people in their care. We have a beautiful caravan on the Kent coast, and a gorgeous apartment in Tenerife. Both places are perfect for a family holiday to escape the normal routine of everyday life.

 

So why should you choose Chrysalis Care? Because it is our goal as an agency to transform the lives of children and young people. And to do that we need to work as a team alongside our foster carers and their families. To achieve this, we will always endeavour to support, prepare and stand by our carers throughout their whole fostering careers. As a current foster carer has said “This is a family run agency who truly care.  Its staff are amazing, kind and helpful.  If you are considering fostering, give them a call, they are honest and will talk to you openly about the ins and outs, the hardships and the amazing rewards. It’s the best thing I ever did.”

Read our Ofsted report to learn more.
Download our Application Form.
Please also see our Internet Search Policy and Ex-Offenders Recruitment Procedure when completing your Application Form.
You can post your application form to the address above, or email it to: info@chrysaliscare.org

Open Days and online information sessions

Visit Chrysalis Care on one of our open days or join one of our online information sessions to find out more about fostering and how you can transform children and young peoples’ lives as well as your own!