Our competitive financial package will help with the cost of looking after your foster child. This is made up of your fostering allowance and fee.

Fostering allowance

All foster carers receive an allowance to cover costs involved in caring for a child, such as food, clothing, travel, household expenses and pocket money. The amount you receive is based on how many children you look after, and their age.

Extra fostering allowances are paid at Christmas and in the summer to support you.

Fostering fee

The fee you receive is based on:

• your skills
• your knowledge and experience
• your ability to meet the needs to the child you foster

For more information, Contact Fostering and we can work out how much you could receive. Get in touch and we can support you through this process.

We're here for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week with a team of expert professionals and access to the kind of wrap-around, specialist support that only your local council can offer you. 

This may be with our out of hours emergency duty team, professional support during the day from our qualified workers and through our specialist services. We have a dedicated team who offer training, advice, guidance and support for you and the children or young people you care for.

Training

Our Prepare to Foster course gets you started with the basics before your approval and once you're on our books we offer all sorts of training from first aid to behaviour courses to give you the skills you need.

Support groups

We've got groups for you, groups for your own children and groups for your foster children. Helping everyone link in with someone in similar situations so you can share your stories, learn from each other and support each other - it's why we call ourselves a fostering family at Durham.

Ask the experts

From the simplest questions to the most difficult challenges - we're here for you. Unique to Durham County Council, we also have our Full Circle team. They offer specialist psychological support for children, young people, their families and carers. The team includes a consultant clinical psychologist as well as specialist therapeutic workers who can support you and the children you foster up to the age of 18.