BECOME A FOSTER PARENT
The Open Home Foundation – Te Whare Kaupapa Awhina is looking for capable caring people who identify with our special character and who would like to join our mission.
If you have the capacity to provide quality child/tamaiti – centred, family/whānau – focused care in your home then we would love to hear from you!
The page below includes interviews with actual OHF foster parents and provides information about what to expect as you start your foster parent journey.
To Foster Means To:
The Open Home Foundation needs people who will care for:
• Tend affectionately
• Cherish
• Keep warm
• Promote growth of
• Encourage
• Be favourable to
Foster Parents open their homes as well as their hearts to children who need out of family/whānau care.
Caring for other people’s children can be demanding work. To complement your own knowledge and experience you will be given appropriate training and support to help care for the children we place in your care.
• Planned respite for a child or teenager
• Short term care
• A home to a single mum and baby
• Respite for a family who has a child with a disability
• Foster care for sibling groups
• Permanent Care
The Need For Care
The Open Home Foundation needs people who will care for:
• Babies and pre-school children
• Primary age children
• Adolescents
• Siblings who need to be placed together
• A single mum with a child - to learn parenting skills
• Providing respite care to children being raised by their Grandparents
• Children and young people aged between 5–16 years with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and/or an intellectual disability for formal respite.
Assessment & Approval to Provide care
Open Home Foundation is committed to children and young people receiving excellent out of home care. To this end you will need to go through an assessment, training and approval process before being accepted as a Foster parent. You will need to give information about yourselves in an application form and go through an assessment and approval process including:
• Interviews
• Police check (including boarders and other adults over 17 in the home)
• A medical record check
• An Oranga Tamariki record clearance
• Reference checking
• A home safety check.
You will receive Foster Parent Training
Foster parent training begins with 21 hours of induction training. Attendance at this course is compulsory even for a foster parent that will not be the primary carer e.g. as a foster father. Foster fathers have a very important part to play as role models for children coming into care.
The Initial Foster Parent Training includes:
• Knowledge and skills to provide high quality care
• Concepts and ideas in regard to fostering children/young people
• Open Home Foundation policies and processes
• First aid techniques for children
Foster Parent relationships with the natural family/whānau
Foster parents need to remember that children and young people who are placed in care have their own natural family/whānau. The relationship between the child and their family remains very significant no matter what the circumstances are that has required the child to come into care.
The Open Home Foundation encourages and supports this contact. Our social workers will work with you and the child’s natural family to make sure the child maintains the positive relationships with their natural family members through planned and where necessary supervised contact visits. Our experience and professional research shows that the stronger the links between the foster family/whānau, the child in care and the natural family/whānau, the better the chance of good outcomes for children.
Lynda Parata – 16/6/1962 – 11/12/2014
Kei roto i te ngākau nui o Te Whare Kaupapa Awhina mō ake tonu atu – Forever remembered within the heart of Open Home Foundation.
Fostering cannot be done in isolation. OHF shares this responsibility with you providing prayer support, a dedicated Foster Parent Social worker to work with you and a Social Worker who knows the child’s circumstances and will support the child/young person while in care. Our social workers will help you integrate your foster child into your family and wider community networks.
Foster Parents are reimbursed for the expenses of having a child in care on a fortnightly basis. Board payment reimbursements are non taxable and not counted as income for benefit purposes.
Commitment To Care
There is a cost to unconditional love. Commitment and unconditional love builds a sense of acceptance, belonging and love for a child or young person in care.
OHF will always do its best to match a child/young person needing care with the most suitable Foster Family. It is important that children and young people do not experience being shifted from home to home.
Before Foster Parents decide whether to open their home to a child or young person, they need to seriously consider the level of commitment needed and the impact it may have on their own family.
Making Your Decision
The Open Home Foundation is a community of Christians dedicated to glorifying God through serving children and families in need. It is a privilege to be part of this work.
If you would like more information or want to fill out an application please contact us about becoming a foster family
Get in touch with us
Thank you for your interest in fostering for Open Home Foundation.
Please read our special character statement and if this sounds like you, fill in your details and let us know how to get back to you.