To wonder if foster care is the best of the bad options if our children were to lose both DH and I?

[ohmaaaan]

Horrible subject but …

In the event of something happening to both DH and myself. I’m wondering if our children might be better in the care system. I know the usual response is no, absolutely not - but we don’t have anyone who could take them. The only person who could realistically take them in is SIL and BIL, who live a long way away and have their own children and a house full. They are nice people but the children don’t know them very well, largely because of the distance.

I would ideally want them to stay at the same school and in the same area but maybe that’s not realistic.

Obviously hope it doesn’t happen.

Losing your parents and going into foster care is traumatic OP. Your children may have experienced a different kind of trauma to other children in care, and may have benefited from secure attachments in their early years, but they will have their own experience of trauma which will shape the rest of their lives. I agree with others that you need to look into the experiences of children in care before you make any binding decisions. You also need to consider the possibility that if your children are over 10 when you die then they are more likely to go into a residential care home than a foster home, and the outcomes for children in those settings are less positive again.

@ScotiaLass obviously.

Whether through bereavement (very rare) neglect, or abuse going into foster care is traumatic, isn’t it? So when we say the outcomes for children in foster care are poor that doesn’t mean that foster carers are inherently awful, it’s more likely linked to the trauma in the first place.

It is very true that you never know but that holds true for BIL and SIL too. I don’t know them well. Trying to form a relationship so that they can take the children in the unlikely event we die would be very impractical.

Buylife insurance. The guardians you choose for your child can purchase a bigger home if you die. You are picturing everyone having to fit into an existing life, but the reality of becoming parents to orphaned children would be adapting the family.

Yes, your children would have to move. Foster care will have them moving far more frequently and often not together. It’s rarely a stable upbringing. There is also poor support in the transition from childhood to adulthood.

We have it @Ponderingwindow but even with a big payout given where SIL and BIL live they aren’t going to stretch to a six bed, or even a five bed.

This week is Kinship Care Week strangely enough - worth reading up about.

kinship.org.uk/

Conceivably family could still tell them stories about their memories of you, give them that connection.

Going into the care system, there’s certainly no guarantee they wouldn’t have to change schools. In fact, I think a school change would be quite likely, especially if keeping them together is the priority. Only so many family would qualify for that, changes are they’re not already waiting in your school catchment zone.

But these children might not go into residential care. I bet that foster carers would be relatively easy to find as the children are not from a background of abuse or neglect. The children who go into residential homes are mostly those who can't live in a family.

Btw I have two adopted children. Their half sister had a wonderful experience in long term foster carer. It isn't all bad.

Just how far away are they, then? Don't you want your children to have a sense of being part of a wider family? It was very impractical for me, too, but I made the effort. It made a difference to my children, even without them being orphaned.

I am the named guardian for my nephews, see them 2/3 times a year and regularly chat on facetime. We live a long way away so can't be helped.

In the unlikely event of something happening I don't know if I would move there, or they would move here. I do know that I would do anything required to take care of them.

If they were in that position sharing a room would be a long way down the list of things to worry about. Siblings share rooms all the time. Having someone stable that you know loves you and will be there no matter what is much more important.

What does your DH think?

So you didn't have a will that appointed guardians should the worst happen?

We were in a similar situation to OP in that the only family members were my SIL and BIL who lived nearly two hours away. I felt the same about my kids potentially having to move away from their school and friends, but ultimately, although we only saw the other family every couple of months, their kids were almost the same age as ours, and we all got on well. So we decided that was the least worst option.

Yes, the chances of both parents dying when the kids are young, are, thankfully, tiny. But it's something that all parents should have a plan for, or it can cause huge uncertainty, and potential falling out about who should have them, in bigger families.

I've hesitated to say this, but when I worked in secondary schools there were clearly some foster carers in our authority who saw caring as a money making enterprise.

My husband was surprised when he was told that foster caring was what someone he knew did for a living - both the young woman her mother were foster carers. (This may not be the case in other areas, of course.)

The vetting only goes so far. I recall my incredulity when I realised that the foster parents of one of my pupils were the parents of a former feral pupil and that the girl being fostered was having to share a home with this now grown male.

I did meet many wonderful foster carers and also many wonderful kinship carers.

My understanding was that foster care was only ever a last resort, when there was no other family or the family was unsuitable.

I have very fond memories of an older couple who fostered a child who was on the spectrum. The child was one of a large family where the mother - also on the spectrum - had been unable to look after her children properly and had physically abused them.

The children had been split up and sent to various institutions.

The foster carers managed to trace the eldest sibling who had physically protected the youngest by hiding the child under a bed and taking the beatings intended for the youngest. The eldest was living independently by then and once contact was re-established the two had regular meetings.

I'm wittering on here, but just to say that I admire the fact that you're making preparations for your children even though they probably won't be needed.

If it were my child, and there was a family member who seemed to be of reasonable character and they were willing, I'd choose them over a foster carer.

It can be a full time job so of course people can do it as a living. Why was your husband surprised?

@Solongasnake the thing is they (and us) like most families have things at weekends: kids parties, swimming, sports. Demanding either that they come to us or announcing we’re going to them and everyone has to miss those things in case they end up living with them one day seems a bit odd. At the moment their house is tiny so us visiting them is very impractical and we can’t really demand they come to us. They have busy lives as do we. Just how it goes.

I work in this field and know many lovely foster carers / adopters so no foster care is not always a hideous experience for a child.
But being brutally honest the parents most likely to have made plans for their own children if something happens to them as parents, are people who know what the system is actually like. They would do anything to stop their own kids ending up in the care system, and yes I had made my wishes clear and made small adjustments as my own children grew older.

If you are a single parent with no or a useless father it’s imperative to sort this out. The times I’ve seen this actually happen have been single parents.

I worry about this too OP. My closest friends have SEN kids and and are overloaded, or have no children and not interested. On DH's side, his sister is older, not close to him and is not interested in us, on my side my brother has mental health problems and actively decided agains children for this (and other reasons). Our parents are all in their 80s and infirm - we are helping with their care.

DH is a social worker for foster care agencies, and would be heartbroken at the thought of our kids in care.

We asked DB and he agreed .. but honestly had the kids been young (they are 12 and 14 now) I am not confident they would have thrived. But once we had decided that, we did manage to stop worrying and not dwell on the possibility.

It is so hard when you don't have good family options. Hopefully we will both make it to see our kids to adulthood but unfortunately noone can guarantee this and once you have kids, this is a concern.

I think because it never occurred to him that a young woman would do that as a career - he'd assumed that people fostered either for altruistic reasons or because they wanted to extend their family.

As a boy, he'd had a foster sister. (Unfortunately, she died in her 20s.)

It's not just about if you die, though. Children like to feel that they're part of a wider family. And it's a matter of prioritising things. So if there are regular activities at the weekend, take a weekend off or visit in the school holidays. If they can't put you up, camp in the garden or rent an airbnb, and let them know they're welcome to stay with you. When your children are older, there's a good chance that they won't stay in touch with friends from primary school, let alone their parents, and they probably won't keep going with the sports they're doing now. But they will stay in touch with aunts and uncles they've seen regularly throughout their lives, and with cousins they've got to know well. You don't have to demand or announce - just say it would be nice to see each other more often (or for the cousins or whatever the relationship is to see each other more often), and increase the frequency of visits a bit, make sure you send birthday and Christmas presents, message them a bit more, arrange to meet them halfway between your homes, for a weekend in London or whatever, invite their children on holiday, etc - you'll all gradually get to know each other better.

It's not extending your family to foster children unless you do it under a scheme like foster to adopt. Most fostering has reunification with family as the goal. A lot of children have speciel needs which foster parents are trained to sort.

Altruism doesn't pay the bills. There is certainly room for improvement in the information provided about being a foster parent I think.

When we were making our Will when our children were young we named some good friends as guardians should anything happen to us because they knew them well had children the same age and they lived locally, like you our family lived away didn't know them particularly well and I didn't want their life to be disrupted any more than possible. Luckily we never had to do that and our children are now adults but I still think it was the right move.
In your situation OP if you don't have any friends able /willing to be named to be honest I'm not sure what I would do because outcomes for children in t the care system are not great

Oh, I agree with all that.

I'm not sure exactly how things worked with my husband's foster sister. I know that she was with my in-laws for a good while. This would have been the 1950s.

When she was 16, she wanted to get married. My in-laws apparently weren't keen because the fiancé was significantly older than her. Even though Scots law allowed girls of that age to get married without permission, I'm told that she had to get the blessing of the Adoption Society.

People from the Adoption Society interviewed the family (and the fiancé as well, I believe) and gave their permission.

I'm told that the foster sister had a very happy marriage in spite of my in-laws' misgivings about the age difference. Ironically, her husband lived to a ripe old age, only dying a couple of years ago, whereas DH's foster sister didn't see 30 and her husband was left as a single parent to two children.

@CucumbersForMyCat 'Firstly, it's not your decision to worry about, as you'd be dead.'

That'd be a shocking lack of planning if you didn't think ahead and nominate guardians.

OP, you're right to think about this and it's very important to name guardians in your will. All parents should do this.

There are a few considerations. Firstly and probably most importantly you should discuss with the guardians that they are happy to be nominated.

You can leave money to guardians to cover the extra costs.

If you choose family or friends your children will stay together.

Only you know if you want BiL and SiL to be guardians. If not, how about friends or more distant family?

Local authority care would be the very last resort for me, I have to say. The children may not stay together. They may move from home to home. They are unlikely to stay at the same school as they are at now. Or they may be really lucky and find a wonderful family who adopt them.

It's very very unlikely the scenario will occur so, once you've made provision in your will, put it out of your mind and enjoy their childhood. 🙂

1950 were so different from 2026.

How is it possible for you to seem so pragmatic and have such a rose tinted view of the care system at the same time?

The thought that your kids would be better off in foster care than with family they only see a couple of times a year because, in your head, they stay together in a lovely happy foster family with separate bedrooms and at their local village school is, frankly, bonkers.

The reality is they’ll likely be separated, staying with families who could be anything ranging from lovely to utterly abusive, move around at least a handful of times before adulthood, live outside the local village and potentially very far away, have siblings or other foster children in the household too who are total strangers and with whom they may not get along AND have a huge traumatic reaction to the above at a time in their lives when they’ve been orphaned.

How anyone could genuinely think that the care system would be preferable to a blood relative just because that relative doesn’t live next door and pop in for tea every night baffles me