Skylark Fostering – A Year in the Making!
Have you ever wondered what it takes to establish an Independent Fostering Agency (IFA)? At Skylark Fostering, we have dedicated over a year to building and nurturing our agency from the ground up.
A year in the making…
Starting an IFA is no small feat, especially given the crucial role of safeguarding and protecting vulnerable children and young people. While we, Trish, and Tim, bring a wealth of fostering experience and knowledge to the table, the past year has been a journey of continuous learning and development in building Skylark Fostering from scratch.
In the initial stages, our focus was on crafting our identity - choosing our name, designing our logo, and ensuring our branding resonated with the values we uphold. A considerable part of our efforts involved creating documentation, policies, procedures, and templates. We meticulously tailored these to meet the specific needs of the children and young people we aim to support, as well as our foster carers. We have ensured we have services in place from the leading providers of fostering training providers, case management systems and advice and support specialists as well as utilising small local Lincolnshire businesses.
Other significant activity during the past year includes:
Building robust support networks has been crucial. We have forged strong connections with professionals like ScreenSafe to ensure our foster carers have the support they need to keep children and young people safe in respect of all online safety.
We've also begun planning and interviewing our members of staff as well as independent assessing social workers, and panel members, setting the foundation for a skilled and dedicated team.
We are in the exciting process of transitioning from a virtual office to our first physical location in the heart of Lincoln, this marks a significant milestone for us. This strategic move is designed to enhance our support to foster carers and facilitate better service delivery.
The journey towards full operational status included submitting a detailed application to Ofsted and undergoing a registration visit, the outcome of which is pending!
Meanwhile, we have launched our website and Facebook page to connect with the community and share our mission.
Our marketing efforts have ramped up as well, with the design and production of brochures, posters, and leaflets for our upcoming events. We are eager to engage with the people of Lincolnshire through our planned calendar of events and look forward to building lasting relationships within the community.
It has been a busy and exhilarating year at Skylark Fostering. Those who knew us before and those who met us during this journey, will appreciate how passionate we are about building Skylark. We are proud of our progress and excited about the future. Thank you for joining us on this journey. Together, we are committed to making a difference in the lives of children, young people, and foster carers.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have supported us on our journey to date, especially our families who we could not have done this without.
For Trish, this is special thanks to husband Paul and three amazing daughters, Sophie, Ella, and Grace. For Tim this is huge thanks to wife Sandra and three fabulous daughters Fushia, Holly, and Scarlett.
Stay tuned to learn more about our progression!
Trish Kelly & Tim Clayton