Treehouse foster care

As part of our specialist fostering schemes, Treehouse foster care can be challenging, demanding and emotionally rewarding in equal measure. That's why we provide enhanced training, dedicated professional support and increased financial recognition to carers who take on these important roles. If you have experience supporting children and families affected by a trauma, adversity or crisis, you may already have the skills needed to become a Treehouse foster carer.

Supporting fostering families together

Treehouse Foster Carers provide practical, emotional and therapeutic support to a group of foster families known as branch carers. Treehouse carers form part of a supportive fostering community by offering sleepovers, planned breaks, mentoring and practical support to children and foster carers.

The model is built around relationships, community and shared support.

What you'll do

Provide short breaks and sleepovers.
Support foster families during challenging periods.
Build positive relationships with children across the fostering network.
Lead on fostering community activities and events.
Help improve placement stability.

Ideal for carers who

Enjoy building relationships.
Want flexibility.
Have strong mentoring and support skills.
Value community-based fostering.
Have at least one spare bedroom.

Leave and flexibility

Up to 28 days leave per year.
One planned weekend off each month.
Additional flexibility where support needs arise unexpectedly.

What support will I receive?

All specialist foster carers benefit from:

A dedicated supervising social worker.
Specialist training and development opportunities.
Regular supervision and support groups.
Multi-agency professional support.
Access to therapeutic and specialist advice.
Family Support Worker assistance.
Regular support calls and home visits.
Out-of-hours support from the Emergency Duty Team.
Access to the Children in Care Support Line.
Competitive fees and allowances. Download our 2026/2027 Finance Guide here.

Our role as Treehouse carers enables us to provide support to our families (Branch carers) and their young people. We enjoy organising events and get together’s with our families. We take pride in watching the relationships forming between our young people and with the branch carers. We empower our carers, and help to build confidence in themselves and reduce their feelings of isolation. We can support both carers and young people and be a familiar face in meetings and help them to understand some of the processes of these.

We like to talk to our young people and get their ideas of activities that they would like to do and they produce some fabulous suggestions. We get together every month with our young people, this can be at our house where have lots of different activities for the young people to do and we have also been bowling, trampoline parks, ice skating and picnics.

All our young people come to us for sleepovers, we like to have these pre planned and not always as an emergency, we try to support before crisis point by offering breathing space for the carers and the young people. This gives an opportunity for some reflective space and allows restorative work to take place to prevent the placement from breaking down.

We are available 24/6 to our families and this can be a phone call, a message, or a sleepover. We have a group chat available for all carers and we all share ideas, advice, and information to each other.

The best things about being a treehouse carer is knowing that our branch carers have support available when they need it the most, and we have built strong relationships with our young people so when they have sleepovers with us, they have told us their anxiety is reduced as they already know.

- Michelle, Treehouse Foster Carer