What to expect at the fostering panel

The panel typically is the most daunting part of the process for new fostering families, being the culmination of deep-diving discussions and interviews with your fostering assessor with the fostering panel scrutinising every detail of your completed Form F (a document which covers all aspects of your assessment). 

To help allay any worries, Rachael has written this post based on our experiences on what you should expect at a fostering panel.

What does the fostering panel do?

At the end of a fostering assessment the final thing that a prospective foster family must do is have their assessment presented to a professional, independent fostering panel who will make a joint recommendation to the Fostering Provider's independent Decision Maker. The recommendation is not just on whether you will be approved as a fostering family, but also about the terms on which you should be approved on, such as how many children or the age range that would be the most appropriate for your family.

Who are they?

Fostering Together has recruited and a fostering panel with diverse experience in a range of relevant experiences, including people who have lived in foster care themselves, foster carers with other providers, those in health and medical professions, social workers, education specialists and child participation workers.

Don't be too daunted however - we promise they're a friendly bunch!

How is it organised?

The panel effectively is just a big meeting and shouldn't feel like an interview. One panel member will act as a chairperson to direct the conversations and keep to time.

Typically we prefer to arrange panels at an accessible venue, so you'll have the opportunity to meet the panel in person. During the current climate however, we've had to make some adaptations to this, and therefore we are also ensuring we can run panel meetings virtually and we'll support you in being able to access this if its not something you're confident with.

In the run-up to your panel meeting, every panel member will have had the opportunity to review all the paperwork in order to bring discussion points to the meeting and identify any questions that they may want to ask you. This is why it is important to be upfront and detailed during your assessment as the more that you have shown that you are open and honest with your assessor, the more confident that the panel team will be coming to the meeting.

You won't be at your panel meeting alone!
We'll try to arrange your panel meeting on the same day as other families, but also your assessor, who you'll be very familiar with by now, will also be there to support you.

What happens on the day?

The panel will discuss your assessment before you join the meeting, so you'll be able to prepare yourself - you should take this opportunity to grab a hot beverage before you will meet the panel team. Fostering Together will have provided some details and a picture of each of the panel members that you can familiarise yourself with so you know who you'll be speaking to.

After this discussion you and your assessor will be invited for further discussion about your assessment, where the panel may ask you both to clarify things or answer questions that they may have come up with to explore after the reading the paperwork. You may be in the meeting for up to around an hour depending on what discussion points have emerged from the panel's conversations. After this, you may briefly leave for the panel to have one final wrap-up, which will typically only be around a couple of minutes, but the panel chair will let you know immediately what your recommendation will be! 

What's next?

Do keep in mind that this does not mean you are actually approved now - the decision will wait on a final report for our Decision Maker, but do rest assured that it is extremely rare for a Decision Maker to wildly disagree with a panel's recommendation.

You can definitely take time to celebrate after a well-deserved job and patiently waiting for your assessment to finish.

A Decision Maker's final decision will be high priority and should not take any longer than a couple of days. When you received this you are now a registered fostering family! You're probably really excited to start fostering a child or children into your family and we'll work with you to find a child in need that will really match and thrive with you and your environment.