Some questions...all help appreciated :)

[Missnic07]

Hi everyone,
My name is Nicola and I found this forum through doing some research on foster care.
I've wanted to do fostering for a while now, but I'm still not in a position to until September at the earliest (I'm moving house and want to be completely sorted with that. I also work full time and need to give 6 weeks notice, and I have a holiday booked for the end of August).

My first question is, would I be able to start the process in January time and if it was all finalised and I'd be accepted before September (say June or July), would they let me hold off on a placement until September?

My second concern is that I'd prefer a placement of 0-6 years. However I'm single and 26 years old without children of my own. Does that mean I likely wouldn't be given a baby placement? I have plenty of experience with young children (I've worked as a TA in a primary school for the last 9 years and have been with the 3-4 year olds for the last 4 of them years). I also have looked after my cousins babies since they were newborn (both 18months now) and had them overnight plenty. I just feel that's where my skills lie, particularly with 0-4 years.

Thanks for any advice :)

Not sure how to edit the thread.. But I wanted to also add that when I get my new house I won't have a mortgage to pay. I'm hoping to give up work to foster full time as I have enough put away to support me for a while before/in between placements.

Hi Nicola, once you are accepted, you don't have to take a placement if you don't want to, also you can say you won't be able to accept one before September (it's the same for people who give up jobs after they are accepted and they have notice period, etc). The process itself can take 4-8 months, so you may end up getting accepted just on time :)
My DP and I don't have own children either and we were accepted for babies with no problems, I think that the more you limit the age of children, the more you limit the chance of placements, there's many more older children placements available than babies.
Are you applying through LA or IFA?

The house situation - congrats! :) They may want you to move in and settle down for a bit before they start the process, there was someone on here who was turned down because they just moved in I think.. SW just want to make sure you're settled and know your area well, but worth trying anyway, it won't hurt to call and ask!
Good luck!

Thank you Kitty!
I'm going to apply through my LA.
That's good to hear about baby placements. I'll give them a ring :)

With LA I'm sure you have a good chance of getting a baby placement :)
And it's good you have some money saved to last you between placements :)
Good luck, let us know how it's going!

I am a retired social worker and team manager in a LA children's services dept and have some 30 years experience in all. The road to fostering can be long and winding! So much depends on different LAs to be honest, but they are cash strapped at the moment because of the huge cuts they have to make.

The thing is 0 - 6 is an age range that many foster carers prefer and so your LA might not take up your application as a priority. Many foster carers prefer babies. Usually the need is for middle years aged children, sibling groups (though usually 2 if sibs) and children with disabilities. The other thing is that much depends on when in the year the LA are putting on training groups, because you have to attend training before your assessment begins.

To be honest I'm a bit surprised that kitty's LA placed babies with her as she had no experience of newborns. Also there is the issue of "supply and demand" - LAs first choice is obviously to place children with their own foster carers (glad you are applying to your LA) and if it so happens that they need a baby placement and no one else is available then they would place with you , rather than having to "buy" an expensive placement from an Independent Fostering Agency. Likewise, regardless of what age you are approved for, when "push comes to shove" carers are often asked to take a child out of their age range, and so long as the social worker completes a form to say that the placement is out of the approved age range it is ok, but it does mean that carers need to be very flexible.

I'm glad you realise that LAs cannot guarantee a placement 52 weeks of the year so there may be weeks between placements for which you will need your own financial resources.

There is a great deal to learn about fostering and I suggest you look on the "British Agencies for Fostering & Adoption" (BAAF) website and on "Fostering Network" which is the national organisation for foster carers.

Please don't be disappointed if your application is not immediately taken up because all LAs are short staffed and so just may not have the staff available. This is a real concern as foster carers are much needed, but there is a national shortage of experienced social workers.

I'm not trying to put you off - just trying to be realistic.

Happy to help further if necessary

You haven't put me off NanaNina, don't worry :)
Thanks a lot for replying and giving me some more insight! I'm going to wait until I'm in my new house and settled before I contact the LA, but I haven't asked them to send me an information pack.
Thanks again x

It all sounds really positive from what I'm reading. I've had similar experiences to you, eg working as a ta etc. I've been fostering for seven months. I had one placement initially and now have two. My third placements are due to arrive today. It's been a week since my last placements left.

NanaNina we have not had a baby placed with us, we were only accepted for a baby placement. This got me thinking though, I appreciate that there's more to caring for a baby than for an older child but surely brand new parents have same amount of experience as we do, why would we not be given a newborn (since they would have less psychological problems which is what makes fostering so much more than just bringing up children). I may be very wrong, so please shed some light on this.
I know that being with IFA, it's unlikely to get a baby or a young child.

On top of what NanaNina said, there's a book Attachment handbook for foster care and adoption by G Schofield and M Beek, I find it very useful :)
Also once accepted you may get membership on fostering network (we have it paid by our IFA but you can pay yourself too), which has lots of info.

Hello Nicola, like Nananina said, the 0-6 age range is usually the most sough after category. On my skills to foster course i think 18 of the 22 people wanted this age range and the others were wanting to do respite care, hence the older age range. We have panel in March and our preference is 0-7 but we can take two siblings. The fact that you wont have a mortgage will be a big plus for you as you may find that having the small age group means less frequent placements. We dont need to do fostering for the income so with us this doesn't matter either, we are happy to wait so that we get the better matches for our birth children.

It's a bit like a business really, they take on apprentices and get them trained up to work with LA or IFA. They are clearly going to want to rush through with someone who could tackle any skill or task they need and take a bit longer on those they know they wont be able to use as much. So i think starting in the new year will give you plenty of time to be ready for after your holiday xx

Sorry kitty didn't read your post properly. I accept that first time parents don't have any more experience than people in your situation but I do believe in maternal instinct, and think that "mother nature" lends a hand - though of course it's true that many first time parents flounder in the early weeks, especially in relation to the broken nights and possibly long crying bouts.

I'm not so sure that there is "more to caring for a baby than an older child" to be honest. It is true that caring for babies is a "full-on" task, but caring for older children (the vast majority of whom will have suffered some kind of abuse or neglect with their birthparents/step-parents) who will often have challenging behaviour as a result can be very difficult indeed. As you will know from the Attachment Handbook you have read, children who have been abused/neglected in their very early life, can be emotionally harmed to a greater or lesser extent throughout their childhood and sometimes into adulthood. They have "learned" that adults are not to be trusted and so have insecure attachments to their birthparents, and it takes a great deal of patience and resilience to help these children to learn to trust again.

Do you mind my asking why you are wanting to foster babies. Have you decided against having your own children or may have them in the future. It's just that IF you are TTTC (and I accept I may be well off the mark here) it would not be fair to place a newborn with you, for your sakes, not the sake of the baby or because you wouldn't properly care for the child. It would just make it much harder when you had to move the baby on, or back home. It's difficult enough for experienced carers to do this, when the have cared for a baby from its earliest days or weeks.

I'm not surprised the IFA approved you for babies as they are of course a business, the nature of which is to "sell" their families to LAs at a very high cost. I'm not sure if they explained to you how the system works, but they don't have children of course and LAs are all horrendously under resourced and so will always avoid "buying" an IFA placement wherever possible, on the basis of cost. They will only do so when there is absolutely no other option, and will often move the child from the IFA placement as soon as a LA carer has a vacancy.

It used to be the case that IFAs were only used for the more difficult children, but I understand from ex colleagues that the numbers of children in IFA placements has considerably increased over the past few years. I am not blaming carers for fostering for IFAs as they are paid more, and there are more services for the child added into the "costings" which of course is a good thing, but it does mean that the budgets of LAs are more and more depleted and the child in the IFA placement has access to services denied to children in LA care. However this form of privatisation is strongly encouraged by the government, and thus more and more IFAs are springing up.

I think it might be a good idea to ask your IFA how many babies/children in your age range they have placed in the past 2 years and how many were moved back into LA care once a placement became available.

I'm a (fairly!) young, single foster carer with no birth children. My LA had no problem approving me for babies - in fact they account for most of the placements I've cared for.

I'd have to disagree with Kitty that babies have less psychological problems though - these babies aren't in care without good reason, most of them are suffering withdrawal from drug or alcohol, most of them have been privy to domestic violence whilst in utero, a huge number of them (even newborns placed straight from hospital) have attachment issues.

If I were applying in this financial climate though I'd make my age range as broad as possible - I know I've said this many times but my own LA are leaving children at home as they don't have the funds to use an IFA (or even their own carers sometimes!). Babies, particularly very young babies, are quite rare now and I know LA baby carers who've been waiting over 6 months for a placement.

(Just re-read MissNics original post and seen you're applying for 0-6, that sounds fine to me. Or you could apply for 0-18 year olds with a preference for 0-6. You might be placed with a 6 year old who could be with you several years, being approved for a wider age means you wouldn't need to go back to panel to keep the child when they turn 7)

Hi NanaNina, we are not looking to foster just babies, we asked for 0-10 years old children simply because we believe this age range is most suitable for us at this moment in time.
We're also not TTTC :) We decided to not have own children now, we don't plan to start family and it may be that we never will, however never say never.. It might happen in the future but no plans for the next good few years. At the same time, we feel that we can give so much to children who need a stable home and someone loving who will be there for them.
We are aware that it's unlikely to have young children placed with us because they normally stay with LAs, I know a couple who has already had 3 placements of siblings within our age range, so fingers crossed.

I know that LA's don't have much money and I don't think it's fair that someone on top of each IFA is earning lots of money by charging LAs a lot more, however I don't think it's fair that LA foster carers are paid so little that they have hardly enough to spend on the child in their care; Our situation is that we're happy to devote our life and free time and share our house and love with children who need it, but we can't do this if we don't get a little bit extra money for it. Perhaps that's why LAs don't have enough carers, as people cannot afford to help without extra income (which is often impossible whilst being a full time carer).
From fellow foster carers, I know that LA doesn't always give great support and this is what played a huge role in our decision about who to go with (I guess it varies from one place to other and the one in my area is not that good).

Recently there was a couple accepted with our IFA who actually were bringing the placement from LA to our IFA... which I thought was a little odd considering the money LA had to spend on them.. I don't know the reasons behind this though.

If there are any specific titles especially worth reading, please mention them, that would be very be helpful, as at the moment it's hard to distinguish what is best to read, so I am looking at all sorts :) I've read a lot about attachments and secure base and have been reading books about children development (my sister is a primary school teacher abroad, so she has plenty of books on children psychology and emotional development) and also true stories written by authors who were abused and neglected as children.

Thanks for suggestions NanaNina :)

It's good to know about the attachment issues of newborn babies, scarlet - up to this point I thought the babies would have such problems after being neglected by birth mothers for some time after birth but it makes sense if they were abused whilst mother was pregnant and or drinking/drug user..

Hi op I was a foster carer for over 7 years I have now adopted

One word of advice it's actually bad practice for LA to allow carers without brith children to foster baby's

So if this is what an LA is offering alarm bells would be ringing pre adoption fostering is very emotionally difficult

I know my LA did not allow it and many don't along with other things like making sure fc are the youngest in any family with BC

If I were you I would look at 5-10 which is mid age range children of this age are a lot less likely to be going for adoption.

I was your age when I started fostering :)

Also please don't get 0-18 approval although it's said you can refuse placements huge pressure can be put on you to take a placements also think about how it would be having a 17 year in placement with a 25-26 year old I can foresee all sorts of issues

If you specify a age range you can then study ECt and you become a specialist somewhat in that age range

Hi kitty a good book to read is "Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt - it's not a particularly easy read, but readable in chunks - I dipped in and out of it. It's really important though about attachment issues because she cites evidence that proves that the pathways of the brain are altered irrevocably during early days, weeks and months, dependent upon the attachment pattern between baby and mother/father/carer. She also talks of how the foetus in utero can be adversely affected by extreme tension in the mother and by issues like domestic violence.

It will be on Amazon and is a paperback so not very expensive.

The issue of drink and drug abuse when pregnant are things that are not uncommon in terms of the safeguarding of children. Babies can be born with drug "addiction" but it is possible for them to be safely withdrawn from the damage that was done to them in utero, although it means a longer stay in hospital and stress to the baby.

Babies born to mothers who seriously abuse alcohol whilst pregnant is much worse because they can be born with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome and there is no medical intervention that can reverse or remedy this. The reason is because alcohol can actually enter the placenta and damage the cells of the foetus in utero and adversely affect the foetus at each stage of development.

The other thing about FAS is that some 80% of cases in the UK are undiagnosed through lack of knowledge about this problem, even amongst medics. As it is a syndrome the affected baby can grow to be anywhere between completely normal at one end of the continuum to seriously affected throughout the lifespan at the other end. These children very often show very disturbed and disturbing behaviour and as they are largely undiagnosed their behaviour is often seen at home and in school as something that needs to be corrected, and whatever measures are taken in this respect, merely compound the problem.

Needless to say the USA are streets ahead of us in understanding FAS. If you google there is a plethora of information. The book I would recommend is "Foetal Alcohol Syndrome - the Hangover Without a Cure" - can't remember the author, and I loaned it to someone and never got It back. Again not an easy read but I found it helpful as I was dealing with such a case.

I think I suggested going on BAAF website as they have good publications you could read as I imagine Fostering Network do too.

Another good book (but expensive I think and somewhat outdated) is a "Child's Journey Through Placement" by Vera Falbherg (an American woman who is a colossus as far as fostering and adoption is concerned.

I'm not sure what books you are reading about people who were abused and neglected as children, if they are the "misery memoirs" which have flooded onto the market, I would give them a miss. Many of them have been found to be untrue or hugely exaggerated. Similarly I would avoid those paperbacks by Cathy Glass who claims to be a foster carer but I honestly don't believe that she is, although her books state they are non-fiction, and MN recommends them.

Have two Children with FAS both now adults and in Employment so be aware it is not all doom and gloom, with good interventions and understanding positive outcomes can be achieved, US may be ahead but find are very negative. www. FASaware.co.uk founder has just been received an MBE in this years list sure you will find all you need too know
on their Webb and Masses of Educational resources

I think so much depends fasparent on how severely the children are affected. I placed a 7 month baby with adopters when I was doing social work (many years ago) and the mother was an alcoholic but I didn't know anything about FAS then, and I met up with the adoptive mother some 20 years later and learned what an unbelievably difficult time they had had with their daughter with the most bizarre behaviour imaginable. They had found out about FAS of course but had not had any real help from anywhere. Of course had they had the help you mention things might have been different.

Fast forward the tape to about 5 years ago and I was doing an independent assessment on grandparents who wanted to care for their grand-daughter. The mother was a chronic alcoholic. When I went to see the baby in the foster home I immediately thought back to that 7 month baby and how alike they looked, and all the same things, small for dates, misshapen head, very thin top lip giving the mouth a "fish" like look etc. I mentioned my concerns to the experienced foster carers and they had thought exactly the same as the baby reminded them of another baby they had cared for whose mother was a chronic alcoholic.

I couldn't get the medics to take my concerns seriously. The HV didn't even know that the foetus can be damaged in utero, and the GP dismissed my concerns. Fortunately the child's Guardian (this case was in care proceedings) took me seriously and insisted that an expert on FAS from Glasgow was bought in to assess the child. He confirmed that this was a FAS baby but was unable to say how the future would pan out, as there was no way of predicting where exactly the child would be on the continuum between completely normal and severely affected.

When I explained the situation to the grandparents they still wanted to go ahead, even though they were well aware of the risks. Fortunately they were relatively young grandparents. The baby moved to them and I have kept in touch and there have been numerous problems. She was very late in meeting her milestones and at 6 years she has global developmental delay, the most serious is speech and language delay. The child also has serious behaviour problems and the grandparents are very worn down. They are having a reasonable amount of support and the child has a place in a special school, but I do worry how they will cope with the years ahead.

I will look at the site you mention FASparent as it may be that there is more support that could be made available to this family.

Thanks for your interest Nana Nina , have been working alongside many
foster and adoptive parents for many years with medical professional , NHS and all support services. True all FAS and FASD children are effected in different way's example our dd was at the high end Full FAS
birth weight 2lbs 3oz. with heart defect's, central nervous system dysfunctions, skeletal and growth problems , where as ds has mainly behaviour problems both are now in mid 20's ., They still have their problems as you know FAS and FASD is for life, but they are both are working and are fine. There are many support groups on the Webb www.fasaware.co.uk strength in numbers and Knowledge has progressed significantly as has understanding and support, parents have taken part in research and education , which is now published and available too all UK Schools as is SEN FAS FASD educational module available too all colleges and university's . There is also a 1st NHS Assessment and Diagnostic Clinic in Surry and Border NHS Trust.