Do we have a chance ?

[rainbowclouds]

We would love to be able to foster children.We have four wonderful children of our own aged 17,16,10 and 6.
We have one bedroom avaliable to offer ,we have no health issues. all our children are keen on the idea of sharing there home and there mum and dad :)
Unfortunately two years ago we were reported to social services and what came to light was an accusation of Munchausen's syndrome it all stemmed from a scribbled note on a piece of scrap paper in our eldest daugters notes 12 years prior !! nothing was ever said to us in the whole 12 yrs just 2yrs ago when we refused a repeat test on our youngest son did it all come out.
Anyway, we had a cp meeting and an investigation was carried out by social services nothing was found but it was reported we were a lovely family :) .Thank goodness for social services!
Will this spoil our chances of becoming foster parents ?
I only intend to be open and honest on my application for fostering and am starting to wonder if its a no go already :(
Thank you in advance.

Gosh, I really don't know the answer to your question. I would have thought that MS by Proxy would have more of a chance of scuppering your chances than MS alone. Have you contacted your local fostering team yet?

All I can say is that my husband's CRB disclosure is as long as your arm, but social services could see that the nature of his offences just equipped him with more life experience than some people can accumulate in a lifetime (probably me included).

Don't think that two words on your record will be enough to ruin your chances of being a foster carer, because it won't.

We've been foster carers for about 7 years, good luck

Oh bottom when i copied and paste it missed by proxy off !! it dosent look good then :(

A very good friend of ours has said the same as you have said about yourselves, the process we went through when we were investigated has given us different life experiences that alot of people would not have been through.
Do you know if it makes a difference that nothing came of it or is it the fact that we were investigated ?
Sorry so many questions.
Thank you :)

I understand totally, that you don't want to even start the process if you are only going to get a knock back. You said that social services reported that you were a lovely family, that's a fantastic start!

If nothing came of the investigation, and there shouldn't have been one in the first place, then social services will see that for what it was - a waste of everyone's time.

Please at least enquire and have an initial interview with someone from the family placement team.

I would be really interested to hear how you get on

Thank you so much :)
I have applied online to see which suits our family better La or IFA !
Im waiting to hear back as to which to apply with,i didnt realise you could go private !
I will keep you posted,fingers crossed it wont be held against us .

:)

Sorry RC I found your post a little difficult to understand. I am a retired sw and team manager with 30 years experience in fostering & adoption. It doens't matter whether you go with the LA or an IFA, the SS records will be checked as part of the routine checks that are done.

A word of caution about IFAs - they will probably recruit and train you quicker than a LA, and the can approve you, but then they have to "sell" you to the LA, and charge big bucks to the LA. I think IFA carers get paid more than LA carers and there is a better support package for the child, but all this is charged to the LA for the IFAs family IFYSWIM. I don't know what age range you are thinking of but LAs will always use their own foster carers first as this is the least expensive and will only use iFA carers if absolutely necessary, because of the cost. IFA directors are of course making a lot of profit, so it depends whether you want to work for the LA or line the pockets of an entrepeneur who has an IFA. Not that I'm biased or anything!!

Best thing to do is contact your local LA fostering team and have a chat and put it to them about this MbyP thing and see what their response is. People think they can be "ruled out" for this or that without just going to talk to the sw about whatever it is.

Good luck which ever way you go.........you sound like a lovely family. The only thing that strikes me is that it is best that a fostered child is the youngest in the family and this will mean that your 6 yr old will lose her place as the "Baby" - there is usually a policy that there needs to be at least 2 years between fostered children and your own children, so you could be looking at an 8 year old, or 12 years plus. Mind having said that I think LAs are so desparate for foster families that they bend the rules on ages.

Thank you NanaNina i have been reading pages and pages on here and you seem to be the lady with all the wisdom :)
I do understand that if i go with LA or IFA they will both do SS checks and i would only ever be open and honest.
I have read the Ofsted report on our LA and one of the reasons that put us off was the long process which i believe is more than two years !
In regards to Our 6yr old being the' baby' its him that wants the babies !
We thought age range 0-8yrs ! because thats the age group we are around the most ! maybe we are looking at it the wrong way.
We are from a large family with many babies ,toddlers so im not sure this would be an issue but would certainly keep an eye on the situation.We would also be intrested in taking siblings but are not sure how this would work !
I think we best not get ahead of ourselves and just see if we can even qualify to become FC.

Thank you so much for your advice x

No problem RC and I'm no more wise than anyone else - it's just that I've got a lot of experience because it was my career. Children leaving foster homes rarely come in ones, at least twos and sometimes more, but if it's a big family, the kids obviously have to be separated. Most people offer 1 child or if sibs.

Good idea to look at the Ofsted report of your LA and can see why you are put off, but the LA migth have been served with a "notice to improve" so that might hurry things up. Not sure where you are in the country but most LAs are struggling with large numbers of vacant posts and they are "frozen" because they can't afford to recruit new staff because of this coalition slashing all public sector budgets, and most public services were under resourced in any event.

You could try a neighbouring LA or an IFA of course.

Why not have a chat with your own LA and ask how long it will take, and then a neighbouring LA and maybe an IFA (no doubt they will be the quickest as they don't have any statutory duties as LAs do)

Thanks again NanaNina :)

We are from the lovely south west,we have received a pack from a IFA but none of our calls have been returned from our local LA ,i will fill in our pack and return but also give our neighbouring La a call.

Fingers crossed