Channels and Choices

Detailed Information

Channels and Choices Therapeutic Fostering is a foster agency with a difference. Our innovative therapeutic community harnesses the resources, skills and support from all parts of the service to ensure that we are providing the best outcomes for children in our care, and helping children reach their full potential. Channels & Choices therapeutic fostering has won the Essex County Council’s supplier awards for our innovative and pioneering fostering programme. We are the only fostering service that will guarantee you an income whilst you are an approved Foster Carer. A number of Carers who have since transferred to us said that they have spent a huge amount of their personal savings whilst being a Foster Carer and not having children in placement whilst with other Fostering companies. We are one of the only Therapeutic Fostering services in the UK to have our own School, (offering both Primary and Secondary education) and in house Therapy team. Our therapy team works collaboratively with the fostering team to provide direct support and training to our foster carers, as well as individual and group sessions to the children in our care. They also undertake any necessary specialist assessments for the children such as assessments for Autism, ADHD, or ODD. Having our own school and therapy team means we are able to meet both the educational and therapeutic needs of each child placed with our foster carers without delay. Our therapeutic fostering service was an evolutionary development for Channels & Choices. Having built our reputation and expertise as a centre of excellence for residential services,  we recognised that many of the children in our care had made enough progress to enable them to move towards a foster family placement. Our unique and innovative ‘stepping stone’ placements have become our specialty placements for Local Authorities, and placing Social Workers. These placements are: shorter term, outcome focused pieces of work within our group living residential homes. They then move through to a therapeutic foster placement with one of our therapeutic Foster Carers. We create a secure base for the child within the group living homes through the development of meaningful relationships, and stabilising their behaviour. We then begin the planning for a therapeutic foster placement whilst the child keeps the continuity of their school, and their therapist and keyworkers which is completed very carefully.