Welcome to Alliance Foster Care

Who are Alliance Foster Care?

We cover Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, Peterborough and Cambridgeshire. We currently have around 55 Foster Carers and 75 foster children and are always looking for kind-hearted and understanding people to join our fostering family.

We offer a variety of different placements including: short-term foster care (lasting for a few days to a couple of years); parent and child fostering; fostering for refugees and unaccompanied children or young people; and permanency through long-term fostering. are dedicated to ensuring that children of all backgrounds are given the opportunities in life they are entitled to. We provide unwavering support to our Foster Carers and the children they care for so we can inspire brighter futures.

Our Foster Carers can claim a wide range of perks and benefits, like free membership to The Fostering Network, Max Cards, high street discounts, invitations to family activities and events, and much more.

“Carers also have access to advice and guidance from a consultant clinical psychologist, as do supervising social workers and practitioners. These sessions are used to discuss children’s needs and behaviours and reflect on effective practice. There have been examples of this advice supporting and maintaining placements for children.”

Alliance Foster Care’s approach

The team at Alliance Foster Care is committed to helping you provide the highest possible standards of care to foster children and young people. We offer the best possible support to our dedicated team of Foster Carers and their families.

Support and training

Foster families are visited monthly by their allocated Supervising Social Worker (SSW) and receive additional phone or email support whenever they need it. A Supervising Social Worker is available to respond to enquiries out-of-hours, with back-up from one of the managers.

Providing high-quality foster care is made possible by working closely with our Foster Carers. We guide them through personal foster training plans and encourage them to attend local support groups including those in Corby, Northampton, Bedford, Peterborough and Cambridge. We also offer online support groups and training which Foster Carers can access from the comfort of their own home. Foster Carer buddies are allocated to anyone who wants them and provide informal local support.

We help our Foster Carers provide children who may have experienced trauma or neglect with positive experiences and show them a different path in life. Access to therapeutic services is an important part of the ‘wraparound’ care service we offer foster children. We have a psychotherapist who offers consultations to our Foster Carers, supporting them to care for a child’s emotional wellbeing. All our Foster Carers have access to comprehensive training in Therapeutic Parenting.

Events and engagement

Alliance Foster Care has many different groups and events for carers, including: support groups, a Foster Carer Forum, spring, and summer events; Christmas parties and award ceremonies.

Among the events organised by our two-family support workers are: a Youth Council, an Independence Project for 14-18-year-olds, which provides vital life skills such as first aid, basic food hygiene and wellbeing; as well as community activities; arts and crafts and competitions.

Our Youth Council listens to children’s views and feedback in order to shape how we deliver support to them and to our carers. A Foster Carer Forum holds bi-monthly meetings to discuss all aspects of the business, from events to recruitment, encouraging Foster Carers to support the development of our service.

Our values

We hold the values of respect, reliability, honesty and transparency in every aspect of the work we do to support our Foster Carers, children and young people. Children are at the heart of the agency.

Alliance combines the personal feel of a small agency – where support, training and events are local to our Foster Carers – with the benefits of being part of a large group with amazing resources. These include an online virtual school and schemes like The Duke of Edinburgh Award, Young Explorers and access to Encyclopaedia Britannica online.

We highly value our Foster Carers, children and young people and respect diversity in all its forms. We welcome Foster Carers from a diverse range of backgrounds, which reflects the children who need a fostering family. We have a Diversity Children’s Group which seeks to ensure that all children within the agency recognise and value diversity. Alliance Foster Care is passionate about helping children and young people to reach their potential.

Our Aim

We strive to deliver high standards of quality care and the best possible outcomes for the children and young people placed with us. This includes ensuring that each foster carer has a Supervising Social Worker that knows them well and that young people have the opportunity to have support from our Support Workers.

We aim to listen to everyone’s individual experience so that we can create a service that our children, young people and foster carers need. We hold regular Foster Carer Forum as well as groups/events for our young people to gather views which can help us develop what we do.

Our goal is to act on what children, young people and foster carers tell us so that we can keep on providing a service with a high level of support that helps foster carers provide amazing homes where our young people can feel safe, secure, and thrive.