Confidence in Care (CiC) Evaluation

This trial aims to evaluate the Confidence in Care Fostering Changes programme.

The Fostering Changes programme is delivered to foster and kinship carers in Provider Agencies (Local Authorities and independent fostering teams) in Wales. The 12 week training programme aims to increase carer skills and coping strategies and improve the relationship between carer and child.

The main part of the evaluation will be a Randomised Controlled Trial. This will test whether the Fostering Changes training course for foster carers and kinship carers produces better outcomes than if they had only continued to receive usually provided support and advice. This will be achieved by randomly allocating carers to receive the Fostering Changes course immediately or after 12 months. Those who wait at least 12 months will be the control group and those who receive it immediately will be the intervention group. We aim to involve 237 carers in total randomised to intervention on a 2:1 ratio. We will measure how well the carers in both groups feel able to care for the children in their care before the intervention groups receive the training, at the end of the training course and 12 months after randomisation. We will also measure whether children and young people in their care have had any unplanned moves to different carers. We will calculate whether the training course made a significant difference to the intervention group compared to the control group. This will be the first time that an evaluation has tried to measure whether Fostering Changes has a positive effect for carers that lasts beyond the end of the course.

Alongside the Randomised Controlled Trial we will conduct a process evaluation to develop a logic model and investigate whether the Fostering Changes programme was delivered as originally intended and also explore the experiences of those receiving and delivering the training. We will find out how the new elements of the programme were experienced by trainers and carers.

Additional elements of the Confidence in Care Evaluation include:

1. a process evaluation of Children’s Skills Groups;
2. a process evaluation of Fostering Changes for residential workers and;
3. a feasibility study of Fostering Healthy Futures.