Bright World host families

Although your child will be living at school as their main residence, the school boarding house will normally close for short holidays and maybe some weekends throughout the year. UK based students usually go home to their parents at this time and overseas students, who do not have parents or family friends who are resident here, need a host family to stay with during these times.

Yes you must be enrolled on the Bright World programme in order to access our network of fully screened host families.

We always ask parents and the student themselves what they imagine their host family will be like. We ask if they would like a host family with children who are young or the same age as them or if they would prefer an older retired host family whose children have left home already. This helps us to start selecting the host family for the child.

We look at how far the host family lives from the school to avoid long travel times, we consider if the student has allergies to pets or other preferences and the matching process then continues until we find who we think will be the perfect family.

You can either tell us your preferences and we will select a family for you or you can ask for access to our Host Family Selection Tool. This allows you to search for families near your chosen school and then see an outline of the family.

Yes, we actively encourage overseas parents to meet the host family before their child stays there. This does, however take quite a lot of planning and work on behalf of the Bright World Guardianship Care Manager, so to avoid disappointment please give us at least two weeks’ notice.

Our policy is to aim for no further than 30 minutes' drive or 30 miles. We do not always achieve this but if we struggle, we will speak to our customers first. In some places where the school is remote, the journey may be longer. Also if you have very specific dietary or rooming requirements, then this may mean your child will need to travel further to get the ideal family.

Our host families collect and drop off our students unless for some reason that is not possible. Reasons why they cannot might be because they have car troubles or that due to the preference of the student the family is quite far from the school. In these cases Bright World will inform parents way ahead of time and will arrange a taxi to take the student there and back.

This is the ideal and usual scenario, but sometimes students request to be moved. Sometimes Host Families can let us down and become unavailable to host. In this case, we will find the child a new host family.

Once you are fully signed up for our guardianship programme and the host family has agreed to host your child, we will then send you a link to a profile of the family which includes pictures and more information on them (data protection laws in the UK mean we cannot do this beforehand).

All of our host families are of the same high quality but some are older or retired and some are young, busy families with young children. You can indicate to us which your child would prefer, give us any allergy information such as an allergy to pets and then we will select a family that fits your preferences. If you do not like our choice then we can look again.

Yes, we have many families who are happy to cater for vegetarian diets or those that have other restrictions. Just ask at time of booking.

It is difficult to find families who do not have pets as the majority of people in the UK do have pets. We do however, have a selection of families who do not have pets.

The student will be given three meals a day and snacks. Breakfast and lunch in the UK are usually cold meals of cereals, toast for breakfast and lunch is usually a sandwich made with bread and fillings followed by fruit or yoghurt. Sometimes at the weekend, there may be a hot breakfast with eggs and meats. Dinner is always two courses of a main hot meal with meat, fish and vegetables, pasta, potatoes or rice and a desert of pudding or fruits.

Yes, a reasonable amount of laundry will be done by the host family – just as if they are a member of the family.

Some host families do offer single rooms and some have an ensuite or private bathroom. Otherwise, students often share a room and a bathroom.

We will simply move them for the next exeat or half term. We want them to be happy so there is no obligation for them to stay with the family again.

£50 per day.

Each person in the household has a criminal record check (DBS). This is updated annually by us. We also take out two references on each responsible adult in the household. We inspect the house before we place students there which includes not only checking the facilities are comfortable and clean but that the family has insurance, working fire alarms and has an annual gas check on all appliances. Families are revisited each year to check that standards are being maintained.