Skills to Foster Training in Wales: What the Course Covers

Before you can be approved to foster in Wales, you must complete preparation training. This is not optional or informal — it is a required part of the Stage 2 assessment, and it runs alongside your Form F interviews. The primary course used across Wales is "The Skills to Foster," developed by The Fostering Network.

Here is what it covers, how it is structured, and what the Welsh-language option looks like.

What Skills to Foster Is

"The Skills to Foster" is a preparation programme designed to give prospective carers a realistic picture of what fostering involves. It was developed by The Fostering Network, the UK's leading fostering charity, and is delivered across Wales by local authorities and IFAs — often facilitated by experienced foster carers alongside social workers.

The course is not an academic qualification. It is a structured exploration of the role, designed both to prepare applicants and to help them honestly assess whether fostering is right for their household at this point in their lives.

Completion of Skills to Foster is not a standalone certification. It contributes to your overall assessment and is one input the panel considers when reviewing your suitability.

What the Course Covers

The curriculum addresses the realities of fostering rather than the ideal version of it. Core topics include:

Trauma and attachment theory: Most children entering foster care have experienced abuse, neglect, loss, or multiple disruptions. The course explains how early trauma affects a child's behaviour, their ability to form relationships, and their responses to care. Understanding this framework changes how you interpret behaviour that might otherwise seem challenging or manipulative.

Safer caring: Practical guidance on how to structure household routines and interactions to protect both the child and the carer. This includes physical space, digital safety, and how to document incidents and observations.

Safeguarding: What safeguarding concerns look like in practice, how to report them, and what happens after a referral is made. In Wales, this is particularly important given the Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse and Neglect (Wales) Order 2024, which places a legal duty on foster carers to report concerns.

Contact with birth families: The reality of maintaining relationships between a child and their birth family, including how contact is arranged, supervised, and managed when it is emotionally difficult.

Working with the team: Foster carers in Wales work within a multi-agency team — the child's social worker, the supervising social worker, the school, the health service. The course covers how to communicate effectively within this system and how to advocate for the child.

Rights of the child: Wales is unique in having enshrined the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into domestic law through the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011. The course covers what this means for day-to-day care — including the child's right to be heard, their right to maintain their cultural identity, and their right to Welsh-language support where appropriate.

Format and Duration

Skills to Foster is typically delivered over three full days or six evening sessions. Some agencies offer a hybrid or online version, though face-to-face delivery is preferred because the group dynamic is part of the learning experience.

You will meet other applicants who are at a similar stage. You will also hear from experienced carers who speak frankly about the day-to-day realities. These conversations — the ones that happen between sessions — are often where prospective carers get their most useful preparation.

Sgiliau Maethu: The Welsh-Language Option

"Sgiliau Maethu" is the Welsh-language version of Skills to Foster. Under the "Active Offer" principle embedded in Welsh law, fostering services are required to offer training in Welsh without applicants having to specifically request it.

In practice, the availability of Welsh-medium training varies by area. It is most consistently available in North and West Wales, where Welsh is the first language of a larger proportion of the population. In South Wales, Welsh-medium sessions may be delivered on request depending on the local authority or agency.

If you wish to complete your preparation training in Welsh, state this at your initial enquiry stage. The agency is legally obligated to facilitate this, though there may be a short wait for a Welsh-medium cohort.

For carers who do not speak Welsh, this is also relevant: if you are approved to care for a Welsh-speaking child, you will be expected to support their language use. The course addresses how to do this practically.

Training After Approval

Skills to Foster is the beginning of the training journey, not the end. Welsh regulations require carers to engage in ongoing professional development throughout their fostering career.

Most Welsh local authorities require a minimum of 15 hours of continuing learning per year. This is tracked through each carer's Personal Learning Record and Development Plan (PLR&DP).

In the first phase after approval, carers are expected to work through the All Wales Induction Framework for Health and Social Care (AWIF) — a structured programme covering principles and values, safeguarding, health and well-being, and professional practice. See the All Wales Induction Framework guide for what this involves.

Training is not just about compliance — it is tied directly to fee progression. As carers build their portfolio of completed training and accredited learning, their skills fee increases. In Wales, fostering is treated as a profession, and professional development is how you progress within it.

For a comprehensive overview of the entire Welsh fostering system — from the legal framework and assessment process through to post-approval training and financial support — the Wales Fostering Approval Guide covers every stage in the context of the current Welsh regulatory environment.

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