Mother and Baby placements

[HelenaJustina]

Has anyone got any experience of providing these as a foster parent? It is something we are looking into as a family but it is difficult to find info about such a specialised area.

I have some experience of this, yes. What would you like to know? :)

I've assumed so far that it is much more about supporting the young parent than the baby. We haven't parented teenagers yet and I wonder whether that will be a problem?

DH is more concerned about being left holding the baby while a feckless teen goes out and parties til dawn. Or 'unsuitable' boyfriends hanging round all the time, car stereos blaring, doors slamming at all hours... Any ideas about how to reassure him on this front?!

Also we live in a small village with a twice daily bus to the nearest medium sized town. Is that going to cause issues? I'd only be able to ferry a parent and baby around during school hours when I have the free car space! The First Steps Team know where we live and haven't ruled us out based on it, but I worry about a young parent turning up, looking round the village and refusing to stay somewhere so quiet!

Nothing to add but this is something I might be interested in one day so would also like to know more.

Essentially, its an assessment and observation type placement, with the foster carer being a positive parenting role model but also being on hand to keep a close eye on things. Some examples would be: Baby rooming in with parent, foster carer having a baby monitor on so as to make sure that the baby is responded to in the night.
At the start of the placement it is usual for there not to be any out of placement time. So if you need to go somewhere, school run, supermarket, wherever, baby comes too, because they can't usually be left unsupervised with their parent/s
Quite often the parent is attending appointments-counselling for instance, and the baby may also be having contact with other family members, this might take place at your home if appropriate, but a lot of the time it isn't so it would take place at a contact centre.

Its important to keep good daily records which can be fed back to social workers.
Feel free to fire any more questions at me!

Thank you that is actually really helpful. Exactly the kind of information I was looking for. That isn't really what I had imagined, but only because I was struggling to imagine how it would work at all.

My reason for going for it was that surely keeping small babies with a parent is ideal if the parent can be supported enough to make that work. It sounds like a fair amount of running around, but that would be okay - just maybe not at the moment. Come September I'd still have two under school age at home pretty much full time. Though by Sep 15 would only have one at home during the day.

I kind of thought that having a little one around would make modelling age specific parenting easier. Also if I'm going to toddler singing, can take parent/baby along and not stand out too much!

I'd be good at keeping records I think, am a list maker by nature!

Thanks again x

I'm not sure if they will approve people with pre-school children or not.
There are lots of times, for instance, when you'd need to organise childcare as it wouldn't be appropriate to have them around. Things like LAC reviews, supervised contact sessions if they take place at your home, meetings with the various social workers, that kind of thing.
Its a question worth asking anyway. What stage are you at right now?
Parent and baby foster carers are very much in demand in my area;there's been a shortage of them for some time.