Keeping in touch with foster carers

[Ifeel1000yearsold]

I’m a foster carer and adopter. I’ve been around this board a long time although have had a few names changes for security reasons.
I was wondering if any of you would be comfortable sharing whether you’ve encouraged an ongoing relationship with foster carers after your children have been placed and the reasons for your decision. I’m doing some research around this and am really interested to hear your views. Specifically when your child saw the foster carers again after being placed with you, what the time frame was and how you felt it went. Would also be interested in the advice social workers gave around this area.
Thanks in advance.

Research? What sort of research? Ethical approval?

Just at the stage of gathering experiences and ideas for planning some research into attachment at the moment. Very interested in the research by the Fostering Network and also The children were fine report.

We have kept a close relationship going with the foster family. It has worked because we like them, they are geographically close, they are no longer fostering children, they do not impose themselves or ask for more contact than we suggest and our child seems to be accepting of our status and theirs in their life. Therefore the fc are able to take our child off for the day, including going back to theirs for a few hours with no ill effects. Our SW were encouraging of initial regular contact but anticipated it would tail off. They are pleased that it has not as our own SW finds that life work she does with teenage children often involves dealing with the trauma of fc disappearing suddenly. So we are very lucky on a number of fronts and I know it is not possible or desirable to emulate what we have achieved in many instances.

While I was fully supportive of keeping in touch with foster carers, their behaviour through matching and planning gave me cause for concern. The first contact meeting was pretty awful (due to the foster carers behaviour) and impacted my children for months afterwards. Given that, we ended contact which has been hard for my children but I honestly believe continuing contact would have been significantly worse for them.

I’m sad it hasn’t worked the way I hoped, but not terribly surprised tbh.

Our DS was FC's first baby for adoption - they had only fostered older children at that point. We postponed the initial contact that SW had arranged a few weeks after he came home, and did it after 2 months instead because he was quite unsettled. It went well.

2 years on we continue to have a great relationship with them and that's because they are very respectful of our role as his parents (they are adoptive parents themselves of now-adult children, and the husband was also adopted). Since the moment we started introductions they guided us rather than told us what to do. We now see them every few months, and have built relationships with the young children they have fostered since. Also friends with them all on FB so keep them updated quite regularly! I see no reason for them to always be a part of his and our life. It helps that we all get on.

I have fostered and adopted so you may find my experience useful. We fostered 3 siblings for just under 3 years the youngest was 2 1/2 when placed, their social worker was not keen on contact being carried on once they were placed with a family member, her point was they have got to get on with it so, one visit after 7 weeks then I’d leave it was her opinion, she was not great all round to put it mildly. They were very distressed as they barely new the person they went to, we got to see them a few times in the first 6 months, we always remained professional even though we had a deep attachment to them, they were always anxious that we would stop seeing them and found being in their new home difficult as nothing was as had been promised. We sensed that we may loose contact with them, so before they left us we tried to prepare them for not seeing us , we told them that we would always try to see them and that if for other reasons we weren’t able to, that we would never stop loving them, and that when they are grown up they can come and find us. It is a harsh process we were the only family they had ever known, theirs was serious abuse and neglect, I know that them not having contact even if it had been birthday cards just so they knew they had not been forgotten, will impact their lives, moving forward a few years and we adopted, at the adoption ceremony I spoke to the judge about this side of the process as she asked us in more depth about what we thought of the process, she agreed with us saying that severing these ties,when foster careers are willing to keep up some form of contact for the sake of the child Was something that needs to change in the future, she agreed that it must be so distressing for a child to suffer yet another loss. Needless to say my little one sees her foster careers twice a year and I feel is very important for her, she seltef easily with us as we allowed face time from second day graduation fazed out, she has never shown any signs of anxiety over her desperation from them as they are part of her life. Obviously it can’t always work I get that but where possible I feel it’s very important

Sorry for so many typos it’s these bloody fat fingers

While I was fully supportive of keeping in touch with foster carers, their behaviour through matching and planning gave me cause for concern. The first contact meeting was pretty awful (due to the foster carers behaviour) and impacted my children for months afterwards

Was the behaviour unfriendly and disinterested or unprofessional in some other way?

It was deeply unprofessional and included them bringing newly placed foster children to contact and explaining to my DD that they had a new, well behaved girl in place of her. And that was far from the worst of it.

I didn’t choose to end contact lightly and have had to support my children in that loss but the foster carers proved themselves unable to put my children’s needs first, and the fall out from that for my children was incredible. No good from continued relationship could outweigh the harm done in those circumstances.

I have come across foster careers acting so inappropriately in these circumstances never ceases to amaze me x

it was deeply unprofessional Are there strict guidelines about how foster carers should behave? It sounds as though the foster carers made your children feel they were not important, and also criticised them by implying that your children were not "good" children, and that they had been easily replaced, is that right? What did the foster carers say in their defence?

As a minimum I’d expect foster carers to work with plans that were made throughout matching, planning and intros, that they were involved in and had agreed to. There was so much about the contact that wasn’t ok and wasn’t part of the agreed plan (that I’m not going to discuss here). They had no real explanation for not working with the plan and were quite dismissive of the impact on my two.

I’m not going to defend my decision to end contact here, it wasn’t my preferred option but was appropriate in the circumstances.

We met up a few times in the early years. We found our house and their house didn't work for DD1 (8 when placed) but a local attraction worked better. After a while things drifted as DD1 had less need and then they moved away. We still exchange letters at Christmas though and recently met up as part of a wider event.

Our child's foster parents were lovely and our child had a very special place in their heart. They were wonderful through the process, even though their hearts were breaking. She was professional, supportive and loving.

We have had our child 4years and we visit them 4 times a year (and their extended family). They live about 1.5hrs away and that distance is nice because we treat them like extended family. They have never over stepped the mark and we care a great deal for them.

I am so happy we met them, they are wonderful people and I will never stop contacting them unless they wish it to happen.

I have had a similar experience to IAmValid. My son's foster carer and her daughter were brilliant through introductions and are brilliant now. It was agreed formally that we would meet 2 weeks I think it was after he came to live with me, that was it, but it has just felt natural to continue the contact. 2 1/2 years on and we meet up several times a year. I know she loves him and I find it great to have someone who is genuinely interested to hear about every tooth, every step, every new thing he eats - a lot of people aren't! She sent him a congratulations on your big boy pants card when he potty trained. They're part of his history and he loves them in the same way he loves his aunt's, uncles, cousins. I'm a single adopter so sometimes feel I've deprived him of another set of grandparents etc, so it feels nice he's got them as extended family. Plus it helps with the life story stuff as they are in his life story book and he still sees them so there isn't so much mystery around his past before he came to live with me. I know he was very lucky to have had them as his foster family

Our son was placed with us six months ago and we have not had any contact with his foster carers apart from exchanging Christmas cards and a few whatsapp messages. Sadly, they made life very difficult for us during introductions, told us lies and were deeply unprofessional. They did not prepare our son to move on and this has massively impacted our placement. Although they did the basics for him, they made no effort to bring on his development, despite him being globally delayed, and ignored speech therapy advice etc. I would find it very hard to be civil to them if we were to meet now. We did try a FaceTime call a few weeks in to placement but it made our son very distressed.

No, myself and my son have no contact with his foster carers. He wasn’t in their care for a huge amount of time, but the care they provided wasn’t adequate.

He’s hearing impaired, they had failed to treat an awful ear infection because “we thought you would like to do the trip to the doctors”. They left him to scream himself to sleep every night, I as someone with zero experience with toddlers managed to get him to sleep within twenty minutes from day one, they just couldn’t be bothered. He also came in shoes that were three sizes too small. He had the runs constantly while in their care, he’s lactose intolerant, he wasn’t officially diagnosed then but the GP and HV advised the foster carers to remove all dairy, they didn’t bother so he had to put up with the runs, a sore bum and awful tummy ache.

They fed him, washed him and clothed him, but there was absolutely no care going on.

@SimonJT

Your poor poor boy. Your post is heartbreaking.

So glad he has you now but inexcusable that they treated him like that.

jellycatspyjamas I'm so sorry that is awful.

Ifeel1000yearsold we stayed in touch and it worked well. It's kind of been about once a year but initially it was after the first month or so. It's all worked out fine because foster carer is absolutely amazing and a lovely person. She's always behaved impeccably and ds has coped well with everything.

In the long run I want him to be able to talk to her when he is older, if he wants to. And in the short run I think it is good for him to know people do not all disappear from his past.

If she had behaved badly, however, or ds reacted badly, I would have ended it.

We visited initially but not for last few years. However we do send pictures sometimes and always exchange Christmas cards.

As a foster carer myself reading the stories of carers who were cruel and unprofessional breaks my heart 😢

I have moved three children onto adoption. The siblings we text and write to each other and our other child we see once a month. We lived all our children deeply and although I would love to see the siblings often the eldest struggles after seeing us as they found it hard to leave us. We have always said we would decide on the amount of contact depending on how the children cope with it.

Our latest foster child is staying with us forever as we have adopted her ourselves.

I can not believe there are carers out there how give the absolute minimum. One adopter said you can tell how much a child is lived by the carer by how much stuff they come with. We have to send parents home with stuff everyday as they go with everything we have brought for them over their time with us. This is lots! Clothes, toys and we also do a memory box of all the places we visit with them, drawings that have done and anything that their birth families gave them. We also take them on holiday with us, our last child we took to Disneyland. We have our own child and we treat all our foster children like our own x

iusedtohavechickens you are doing an amazing job. Not all foster carers do but you are. Ours too was fabulous. Like all things you get good and bad! We were so.lucky.

We keep in touch with our son’s foster careers. He was with them for 18 months. They are very nice and really cared for him.
They live 4 hours drive away, so we’ve only met up once and we left if 20 months after he was placed. He had a lot of behaviour issues when he came to us, and we thought he needed to feel safe and settled with us before we met up with them again.
Our meet up was a couple of weeks ago, and went really well. We met half way between our homes at a local attraction. He also got to see their other foster child that he had lived with.
We’re planning on meeting up again in the summer holidays.
I think it’s been really positive for our son. It’s good for him to see that not everyone he has loved has disappeared from his life for good.

@iusedtohavechickens, I’d echo what @Italiangreyhound said, it’s obvious you care deeply for the children you’ve had which is lovely to see - I wish my DCs experiences in foster care were as positive. In every line of work there’s good and bad, and fostering makes particular demands on carers. Folk become burnt out, have too many competing demands or simply don’t take to the children placed with them - it takes a lot of insight to know your limits and accept help.

I’m glad so many folk have had good continued relationships with foster carers, there’s a lot of value for children in knowing people don’t always disappear from their lives.