**A Special Letter from the Service Director**

Dear Young Person,
Welcome to our Illuminance family, we are happy to have you join our community of foster families. We promise to make your experience as happy as possible.

My name is Ama and I am the Director of Illuminance Fostering Services. I look forward to meeting you as I pledge to meet every member of our Illuminance family once a year. I am here to listen to you, and you can call me at any time on this number: 07934018475.

We aim to show you that foster care can be a relief to children. I want you to enjoy your stay and be happy, so please know that we want to keep you safe from danger, worry and other stresses.

At Illuminance Fostering we want to encourage you to develop into your best and enjoy being a child. We want to give you an experience where you feel that your foster family has added to your pleasure and joy. We do not want anything to get in your way of you being happy, so always remember that our priority is making sure you can just be you.

I want to let you know that all the adults at Illuminance Fostering care about you, we are all passionate about working together to make your foster care experience a very happy one.

We want to help you live a happy life and be your best at whatever you enjoy doing. Remember there is always someone you can trust and talk to about anything.

Yours,

Ama Appiah

About Illuminance

At Illuminance Fostering Services we take pride in providing children with loving, safe, secure, nurturing and stable foster family placements. We believe that every child has a right to live in a loving, safe and stable family home environment. We go beyond our call of duty because we are passionate about positive outcomes for children. We strongly believe that the best way to keep children safe is to talk to them, listen to their views and take them seriously.

**What is Foster Care?**

There are many reasons why young people need to live with foster carers. Foster carers cares for young people who are not able to live with their birth families. Foster carers job is to take good care of children, listen to them and give them advice. You are not on your own, there are over 60,000 young people today living with foster carers.
Your carer will make sure you are well cared for, happy and make time to listen to you. Your opinion may not be agreed with, but it will always be heard and respected.
You will have a social worker from the Local Authority whose job is to make sure you are safe.

Things Foster Carers cannot do

They must not hit you or push you
They cannot stop your meals
They cannot stop you from contacting your social worker, advocate or IRO
They cannot stop you from having contact with your family
They cannot stop you from asking for help, you have the right to contact ChildLine at anytime

Your Social Worker’s Job

The social worker’s job is to find you a foster family who is able to meet your needs and also checks in with your parents and foster carer. Your social worker will also listen to you and help if there are any problems.

How would the foster carer know what is best for me?

There is a plan in place that tells all the adults around you what they need to do for you while living with your foster family. This is called your care plan and you can ask to have a look so that you know what it says. The care plan is to make sure that you are safe, happy, well cared for, have no worries and growing to be your best.

What can I expect?

Knowing Your Right is very important, the Children Act 2004 was made to ensure that you are supported while living with your foster carer to:

Be healthy and have your needs met

Be safe and protected from all forms of harm
To enjoy life, follow your interest and have positive relationships with people in your life
To be supported to succeed with your education and develop skills
To support you to reach your full individual potential, listen to you and value you
To support and prepare you for life after foster care

Things you should know

You will receive weekly pocket money and the amount depends on your age

Every year there will be a review meeting which looks at how you are getting on. This meeting is called your Looked After Child Review meeting.

Every Six months there will be a meeting to talk about your education and support you with your learning.

The person in charge of this meeting is called an Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO), and you can contact this person if you are not happy about anything or want to discuss any issues that you may have. It is important to know the name of your IRO and you can ask your foster carers to remind you if you forget.

If there is anything you don't understand or you are not happy with you can speak to your foster carer, your carers supervising social worker, your social worker, your independent reviewing officer (IRO) or an independent advocate.
Advocacy is about helping you to speak out about what is important to you. You have the right to say and be listened to when decisions are made about you and your future. You can contact an advocate for lots of different reasons, for example, about where you live, your education, seeing your family, feeling safe, making your voice heard or to help with a complaint.

Keeping safe and other’s safe

Your safety is very important to us while you are living with a foster family. We want your foster family to give you a lot of warm hugs because it is good for you.

But we also respect your choice if you do not want your foster family to give you warm hugs.

We want you to learn that being touched is your choice, that your body belongs to you, and you have the right to say NO if you do not want people to touch you.

We also want you to learn that all the parts of your body under your clothes (private parts) are never to be touched by others.

It is very important that you tell an adult you trust if anyone touches any part of your body under your clothes. Please never keep it a secret even if the person who touched you under your clothes tells you to.

Always remember that: Any touching that must be kept a secret is NOT GOOD TOUCHING! TELL Someone you trust. In the same way please do not touch others under their clothes because is not good and the police can become involved.

Online Safety

We know that what you do online is very important to you, and that there are lots of great opportunities for you to have fun and learn new skills. How are you going to write a CV, search for a job, do your banking, or keep in touch with your friends as you get older? Chances are you'll get to do all these things online.

But you also know that there are a lot of stuff that isn't so good, and that some people out there can make being online dangerous for us if we're not careful – they might try to scam you, get you to do something sexual on camera, meet up with you, or bully you.

Do not send naked photos of yourself or anyone else.

Remember, do not share your passwords, keep it strong and change your password every now and then.

Do not share any personal information with people you do not know online and offline. You already know that not everyone online is who they pretend to be. Be smart – Never arrange to meet up with anyone from your online life without first talking to a trusted adult and taking them along with you.

Bullying

No one likes a bully, and no one likes being bullied. Bullying can be name calling, being hurt, and having your things taken.

If you feel that you are being bullied, the first thing is to tell your foster carer. It is their job to support you and help you deal with tough times. You could also tell your teacher or your own social worker.

Illuminance has its own bullying policy which you can have a copy. If you would like the main principles of this policy are that:

Everyone has the right to be treated with respect and to have their views, who they are and what they believe recognised and valued.
Bullying in any form is not acceptable and we should not put up with it.
Everyone has a responsibility to work together to stop bullying – parents, carers, staff, teachers and children and young people by reporting it.

Illuminance Activities

At Illuminance Fostering we think it is important that children and young people with our foster carers have an opportunity to meet up and have some fun. We have lots of fun days and activities planned with children, carers and staff.

Here are some of them:

Summer fun day

Trip to the beach

End of year party

Picnic with arts and crafts

Day at the zoo

Ten pin bowling

Achievement celebration day

Thorpe Park

Useful Information

How to make a complaint, compliments, or Suggestion – Tell us

At Illuminance we welcome feedback, compliments and complaints are taken seriously. As a result, we want to make it easy, anyone who wants to make a complaint or provide feedback of any nature. You can view our complaints procedure here.

You can request a visit from Love, who is Illuminance Fostering’s complaints officer. If you want to contact Love, you can send an email: Love@Illuminancefostering.co.uk

We promise that you will not get into trouble.

Or you can talk to any of these people at anytime: