Foster carers - come talk to me

[ginjin]

I've been interested in becoming a foster carer for a long, long time now, but I've not been in a position to do so until recently. I gave up work about a year ago, and I've really been wanting to have a foster child join us since then.

Those of you who are foster carers - could you tell me a bit about life as one? The highs/lows/whatever.

It may be that we're totally unsuitable anyway, but I'd really like to look into it further I think.

In case you aren't aware, there is a Fostering board under 'Becoming a parent'. The FCs for my (adopted) DD were fab.
An absolutely fantastic profession.

We've been fostering for 13 years now. The assessment is brutal, training is ongoing.
We've had over 60 children stay with us for periods of 1 day up to 9 years and still with us.
We love doing it and all the children are considered family no matter how long they stay. I wouldn't consider going on holiday or doing anything that didn't include the foster children.
It can be very frustrating,heartbreaking but equally funny and incredibly satisfying.
I find it's not the children who are hard work it's more often the parents or occasionally the other professionals in the child's life.
You need to be tough and prepared to go into battle often to advocate for a child.
If you have a spare room, a sense of humour and oodles of patience I highly recommend it.

Oh thanks Teen - I'll have MNHQ to move it over.

jacob I can well imagine. Do you find it very expensive? I think that's my main worry. We aren't exactly rolling in it!

Hi can I ask a silly question? How do you afford to foster? I have looked into it but I don't see how it's viable financially.

We fostered 0-3 year olds and received expenses. It wasn't a great deal, but babies are cheap to keep! Lots of days at the park, the rounds of all the toddler groups at church halls, plus I had the time (and little helpers) to grow our own veg and soft fruits.

It was a wonderful few years. We only stopped because we adopted and didn't want our kids to keep suffering the trauma of loss when their fostered siblings went off to their new families.

Babi that's a concern of mine too. I have seen the allowances available for my local council, but I'm not sure what that covers etc. There seems to be different tiers which I don't understand.

Shockers that sounds lovely. We also have a vegetable garden! And lots of countryside to play in.

We have pets - would that restrict us?

We've had two placements over the last 2 years. One was just three months and was fairly challenging as it was our first and there were unknown behavioural issues (child had not been in care previously). Our placement is likely to be a longer term one.
If I'm to be completely honest, the hardest thing I find is dealing with bio parents. In both placements the fathers would not accept that they had any part to play in the situation their child was/is in. They both have serious issues with women and are controlling and abusive. It's been hard for me to watch their daughters struggle with loyalty/disordered attachment vs the fear they have of these men.
On the other side, it's extremely rewarding to watch a child learn new things, develop their confidence and become more settled. My husband and I have become a lot closer because you have to work as a very tight team as children may have 'divide and conquer' type strategies that have been learned as a result of living surviving in dysfunctional homes.
I also feel perfectly ok with brushing off charity muggers in the street because I feel I am doing something for the greater good
I should add that I am not in the UK but I think the system here in Australia has similarities with yours.

We had 2 very gentle dogs and a cat.
Because we mostly had our children as very young babies to start with, it was easy to set up behaviour boundaries around the animals, but we did have a separate area for our dogs to chill out childfree. As it was, they all loved each other 😊.

The different tiers of expenses are tied to experience. You will need more experience to take on more challenging behaviours. You would start on the lowest tier.

This is the info for my county - there are two payments. So am I right in thinking the allowance is to cover the cost of the child, and the 'payments for skills' is payment for me, for my time?

Also, how does it work with schooling? Do they choose a foster family near to the child's school, or does the child move to the foster carer's local school?

In our LA we do not advocate mivjng children's schools, nor are there a lit of suitable placements to chose from at any one time. As such lots of foster carers do quite a few miles doing the transport to school. We pay mileage seperatley.

You can look at local authorities or fostering agencies - both have pros and cons..most las pay a little less but try to keep children 'in-house', so agencies tend to have slightly trickier to place children .

colour I suspect it's probably because we're in an expensive part of the country!

Hi

Have you thought of going with an agency although we do get more challenging pay, the pay is a huge difference I presently get £350 a week and have social workers 24/7 available to speak to. We do mainly deal with teenagers which can be difficult at times but also can be very rewarding but in saying that I presently have a nine year old and eight year old places with me.

The private agencies around here offer £550+ per week from what I can see, but I thought fostering through the LA was better? I'm not sure why I have that in my mind... what is the difference? Who funds these private agencies?

When a child comes into care they look at la and then when they have. I beds (which is quite often) or la carers will not accept they will then offer it out to private agencies called ifa (independent fostering agencies).

Obviously this means that la get first pick.

My only concern with la was and why I decided to go with a IFA is that la social workers have many cases and are inundated with work, through experience I can tell you we don't always get answers from them via email and they can be hard to get hold off. I am with fca (national company) and I can get hold of a social worker in 10 mins should I need to have lots of support and lots of training which is very valuable (so so valuable)

I have a good group of support foster carers which I could not manager without also.

In regards to finding they get paid from la... obviously costs them more to place private but as they have not got enough carers they have no choice.

I have been a foster carer for six years and only had three weeks between placements x