Fostering Friendly Employer
We’re pleased to announce that we’re now a Fostering Friendly employer, a programme by The Fostering Network, which helps organisations to actively support fostering, and in particular, foster carer employees.
We have implemented a policy to make a real difference to our employees who foster, and support others in becoming approved foster carers themselves.
Foster carers play a vital role in forming relationships with the children in their care and giving them the safe, stable home, they deserve.
There are currently around 70,000 children in foster care in the UK and we want to play our part in making a challenging role as easy as possible for our foster carer employees. Having a Fostering Friendly policy in place helps us to do just that.
Read what this means to some of our colleagues below:
‘My husband and I began our fostering journey to help make a difference to the most vulnerable children who need a loving family and a place to call home. We have found Screwfix to be exceptionally supportive throughout and could not have got through the lengthy, and intense, assessment process without the support of my manager and the wider teams. The introduction of a Foster Care Policy will not only allow us the necessary time to attend training courses, multi-disciplinary meetings, many ad hoc reviews and meetings and undergo our annual reassessment but will also provide additional family time to support our children’s needs as they settle into our home and adapt to the sudden changes in all of our lives. Most importantly, however, the Foster Care Policy shows Screwfix’s commitment to being a family friendly employer and recognises these children as part of our family, which is incredibly valuable to us.’
‘My partner and I are quite new to fostering, the initial assessment period was very intense and time consuming and at times, was difficult to balance a full-time job with the training to be a carer. Having Screwfix recognise both the need for carers and importance of supporting those who wish to foster is incredibly important. Now actually having a child placed with us, aside from the usual meetings and activities any parent must do; we also have many additional meetings with professionals, extra training and sometimes have to facilitate contact with the child’s biological family. All this eats into holiday, so having the additional days available to us and support from the business, is incredibly helpful.’
