AIBU to be considering fostering!

[Slinkysista]

I've always wanted to foster children and finally i've put the wheels in motion. Now I'm getting nervous and wondering am I taking on a lot of unnecessary stress and wondering if it will affect my own children. Please if you have any positive or negative fostering stories please let me tell me. I want to go in to this with my eyes wide open.

I can't help much, but my sister has just adopted a very content, happy one year old boy... it is thanks to his wonderful (first time) foster parent that he is ready for my sister. The fosterer has another child, her own, and understands what a wonderful, truly good thing, they have done for this child.

I can't thank them enough for looking after my nephew until now.

I'm not saying it won't be hard when he leaves fosterers care, but there is a lot of support and guidance. My nephew will grow up knowing that before he met my sister, his foster mother loved him.

The other thing is I'm worried I'd get attached to them and be heartbroken when they'd have to leave!
Goodness I'm talking myself out of it now :-(

I'm sure you will get attached to them, and probably heartwrenchingly sad, but perhaps not heartbroken... proud.

Sorry, I'm talking you into it. Fosterers are my heroes right now.

You're not simply left to it though.

Even if you decide not to do it, or want to wait until you learn more, I can only keep saying that I wish I could meet my new nephews fosterer and tell her how many lives she's affected for the better.

I am a CP SW and tbh the "support" varies, i am not saying that to put you off, but i had all sorts of illusions about the help given to foster carers that wasn't there.

Have you stipulated the age range that you want to foster?

We have foster carers that only foster babies that are more or less ear marked for adoption, so contact doesn't have tobe facilitated and the emotional fall out of that and neglect, dealt with.

I would go on to the fostering board here and online sothat you knowwhat toexpect.

I would read upon emotional abuse and the effect as well as general neglect, so any behaviour is understood.

Just to say that i am thinking of retiring and becoming a foster carer.

I am thinking in the future for both Mums and their babies.

Do remember most children in care are 'damaged' in someway. You won't know who will be placed with you or their past nor the impact on your own children.

Of course foster parents do sterling work but some view it as a cash cow.

I can give you several negative stories. Friends daughters best friends parents (following me so far?) fostered. The boy was older than the families own daughters and horrifically sexually abused the girls.

Woman in the next road to me has extended her house and has 6-8 teenaged girls at any given time. It is the filthiest dirtiest mining pit and I have no idea how SS dont step in and tell her to clean it up. Two of the girls have tried to commit suicide there.

When you are raking in at leat £400 per head per week, you'd have thought she would get a cleaner at the very least. But that is by-the-by.

A retired acquaintance does short term placements for babies. Again, it pays well and supplements her pension.

I was fostered as a child - I had good and bad experiences (although by "bad" I don't mean anything sinister or abusive).

The "bad" was when I was fostered age 10 by someone who wanted to play Mary Poppins. She was hung up on the romance of "rescuing" an underprivileged child and providing picnics and tea parties etc. I was expected to be suitably grateful and to "fit in" with her snobbish upper middle class family and certainly knew about it when I didn't, which was often.

My next experience was aged 13 when I was fostered by a couple who already had two adopted children (2 & 5) and treated me from the beginning as if I was theirs and had been there all my life. I was their daughter, and introduced to people as such, and that was that. Thank goodness for them :)

So, OP, being very, very clear why you are doing it. It will be stressful, but anything worth doing generally is.

It is definitely worth having a mooch through the threads on the fostering board. There are some really heartwarming, but also some quite scary experiences on there.
YANBU to consider fostering, but you would BU to consider it lightly without knowing a lot about what it entails!
Good luck OP!

Good luck OP. I worked with children and families for a very long time, and without the good foster carers don't know how we'd ever have managed to care for some children. It is very very demanding work, as others have said, the support is variable, though usually much better if you foster for the many private fostering agencies, as they have better resources than local authorities (cuts cuts and more cuts). You are right to consider the impact on your own children, and think carefully about what age group of children you can care for. My own view is it's usually better to foster children younger than your own. So good there are still folks who want to do this despite all the scary stories

YADNBU. I would love to foster/adopt, but dh is against it, so that's that :(

My MIL was a foster career for over 25 years.

I don't know if its changed now but she used to be given very selective and limited information about the children that she fostered. Her own children, including my DH only have very negative and sometimes very upsetting/disturbing accounts of various incidents.

On the other hand she fostered a little girl from 6 months to 4 years (whose grandparents then adopted her). She was bridesmaid at my wedding when she was 9 and is now a lovely grown up who we are all still in regular contact with. Despite the fact I don't get on with mil I can honestly say she saved this girl and turned her life around.