What's it like fostering when you have children?

[heidei]

NC'd for this, just in case.

I'd be so grateful if anyone could answer some of my questions. We have 2DC, aged nearly 4 and nearly 2 and we are considering applying to foster next year. We both love looking after our DC and I have always wanted to foster. I do have some questions though because when I google the questions, all I can find are positive reviews on the agencies websites so I wondered if anyone here could help

General questions:

1. Our spare room is at the bottom of the stairs, is this an issue? Our bedroom and our DC's bedroom are upstairs.
2. Once you have a foster child, how often are the various meetings and are they very sudden or do you get good notice?
3. If we were comfortable with it, we have considered being open to two children of the same gender (only have one spare room) that are siblings so that they didn't have to separate but would that be a rare placement?

Questions specific to our family:

4. We would initially only be open to DC (any gender) from age 2-5 for various reasons, are you allowed to be this specific with ages?

5. This is probably the most important one for me; factoring in the ages of the children we'd potentially foster, how would this impact our 2DC? I'm very interested to know this from either perspective.

6. Do you often get asked to consider children outside of your comfort zone in terms of ages, disabilities etc?

7. Does the payment you get affect universal credit? I assume you don't get paid when you don't have a child in the house so is it totally separate as that money is meant to be spent on the child anyway?

If anyone has any experiences or answers that relate to any of these questions then I'd be most grateful TIA.

So to clarify, my children would be 3&5 when we apply.

I’m a foster carer, have been for 9 years. We currently have a child who came to us as an emergency placement but is now long term.
Our youngest child was 13 when we started fostering.
There is no way I would have fostered whilst my children were young.
Children who come into care often have come from a chaotic lifestyle, they are likely to be suffering from trauma. They will take all of your time and energy. Many have neurodevelopmental conditions that have not been diagnosed.

When a child is placed with you their needs are your priority, your own child’s needs are second to theirs. Young children would not understand this.
If you were looking at caring for babies they often have a lot of contact, sometimes daily. You would be expected to transport them to and from contact. This may be at a contact centre far away( ours was a 32 mile round trip)
There are quite a lot of appointments to attend, especially when the child first arrives, hospitals, schools, their social worker, your social worker, reviews, pep meetings, lac reviews etc.
I would imagine any social worker would not be happy with all of your family sleeping upstairs and the foster child being downstairs alone, personally I wouldn’t dream of doing this to a child.
I don’t think fostering would affect your benefits, you don’t usually get a payment without a child in place though.
There is a lot of training to do and both carers are expected to do it.
Sorry if this seems negative but if I were you I would enjoy your own children while they are young and give them all your attention.
There’s plenty of time to look into fostering when they are older and able to look after themselves a bit more.

Hi @Cassimin , thank you so much for replying

Regarding the room, it wasn't at all intentionally malicious, it's just we've just finished doing DC's room up the way they would like re paint and wallpapers and carpet etc so it was with that in mind (nothing wrong with the carpet etc downstairs but it's specifically tailored to them and their likes if that makes sense).

The other option would be that my husband and I have the room downstairs. I have no issues with that but again, I'd be on another floor so would that be an issue if they were upstairs with my DC?

In your experience, how much notice did you have for meetings or appointments?

It's not at all negative, thank you for answering so many questions

Also, can I ask how long your placements were roughly? Especially the longest and shortest?

I’ve not fostered personally, but I do have experience of working with foster children and families.

A lot of LAs will only let you foster children younger than your youngest - the foster child will need to be the centre of attention. They often come with additional needs. All of them will have experienced significant trauma - either in terms of abuse or in terms of being removed from everything they know. They’re going to need all your time. I have a 2 year old, and I couldn’t foster. My 2 year old needs too much for me to have enough time to give to a foster child.

The notice to take a child can be just hours. It’s not unheard of for a child to need a placement NOW and you’d be asked to drop everything and come and get them. A lot of the appointments are then routine with notice (maybe a few weeks notice) but urgent appointments will come up at short notice.

Placements can be very short - a night or two, or over a year, or even longer. If you’re a short term carer you’ll look at 1 day - 18 months. If you’re long term it’s ideally until the child is 18, so many many years.

Thank you so much @PointeShoesandTutus , that's very helpful

The child's bedroom will need to be on the same floor as yours. However, they may possibly allow this if it's an older child.

I haven't fostered but know a few people who do. It's not something I would advise when you have children so young.
It could and probably will have a pretty negative affect on your own children.
I also don't think having a Foster child sleeping on a different level to the rest of the family would be allowed. Even if it was, there's no way I would do that.
Wait until your children are older.

I was a child in a family with lots of foster children and I wouldn't do it whilst my children were young and needed me.

I've done a lot of fostering. It can be wonderful. It's very hard.

The bedroom is a definite issue. Most fostered siblings would need separate rooms. A room on a different floor in these circumstances is a no go. You cant sleep down there as all the children would be separate from you and less supervised.

Meetings happen at very short notice often. But you will also go to many planned meetings that have been cancelled without you knowing etc.

Lots of places will only let you foster children younger than yours so risks are minimised.

You wont be able to easily change the foster child's school so will end up doing multiple school runs.

The children you foster will probably have many extra needs. If you read some Dan Hughes stuff about attachment you'll get an idea of these.

Thanks everyone

1. Our spare room is at the bottom of the stairs, is this an issue? Our bedroom and our DC's bedroom are upstairs.
   Yes, it is an issue. In general, foster children need to be on the same floor as the adults. You need to be able to get to them quickly in an emergency and also it’s safer if they’re near you. There was a horrible case in the news a while back of a small child who overheated and died because the heating upstairs malfunctioned. The parents’ room was downstairs so they didn’t realise. If they’d been upstairs they would have woken up and could have sorted it out but because young children can’t regulate their temperatures as well as adults this little one didn’t wake up and died in her sleep. The only time it might be allowed would be for older children.

2. Once you have a foster child, how often are the various meetings and are they very sudden or do you get good notice?
   There’s a placement meeting when they arrive, a medical soon after arriving then every year after that, a care team meeting once every 6 weeks, your SW visits you once a month, the children’s SW visits them once a month, a Review every 6 months. Usually at each meeting the next one’s date is given but this can change at short notice. My children’s SW often rings and asks if he can come for a visit the next day. Depending on the child and their circumstances you might have more meetings. There’s also Contact with the child’s birth family. Usually when children first come into care the parents go through assessments to see if they can have them back, so while these are ongoing there’s quite a lot of Contact in order to keep the bonds between parents and children. When my two came to me they had Contact three times a week. Twice a week they were picked up and dropped off but once a week I had to take them to meet the relative, hang around for an hour and a half then collect them again. This was nearly 7 years ago and I know in my area these days most carers are asked to take children to and from all Contact.

3. If we were comfortable with it, we have considered being open to two children of the same gender (only have one spare room) that are siblings so that they didn't have to separate but would that be a rare placement?
   My two are brothers and though we’ve moved now, when they first came to us we only had one spare room so they had to share. That was never an issue for SS when we were approved, they were always happy to approve us for two children. I know quite a few sibling groups that are two children of the same gender so I don’t think it’s that rare.

Questions specific to our family:

4. We would initially only be open to DC (any gender) from age 2-5 for various reasons, are you allowed to be this specific with ages? Yes, you can say the ages you would like. We were approved for 2 aged 0-17 but I did say I’d prefer age 3-8 as those were the ages I’d had most experience with. Ours were 5 and 6 when they came. It does depend on the children coming into the system and which carers they have available. If they’re desperate to find a foster home SS will ask whoever has a space, regardless of the age they would prefer, but foster carers can say no.

Having said that, in my area you wouldn’t get approved for those ages with having children of the age yours are. In most areas birth children have to be older by at least 2 years. I’m in a fairly unusual situation in that my birth child is a lot younger but that’s because she was a bit of a surprise and was born when we already had the boys in a long term placement. So SS weren’t going to move them in that situation, but had she already existed I wouldn’t have been given children older than her. I would really advise you to wait until yours are quite a bit older. Children coming into care are all traumatised just from coming into care and then lots of them have trauma from neglect or abuse on top of this as well. They need a lot of support and care and you have to put their needs first. It will be really hard for you to do that while your own children are so little. You might also be expected to do all nursery/school runs, and you won’t be able to change their school if they’re only with you short term, plus facilitate contact with birth family several times a week. Sometimes Contact is an hour in a contact centre so you might have to take your children with you then hang around with them until it’s time to take the foster children home. There are often behaviour issues that take a lot of time and effort to deal with. When he first came my 5 year old couldn’t stand being told ‘no’ and would have kicking, screaming tantrums that could last for a couple of hours. He was also very possessive of anything he thought should be his. We had a set of plastic coloured cups and he always wanted the red one. But his brother also wanted it sometimes so we had to make sure we were very fair about whose turn it was. Same as things like whose turn it was to press the button on the pedestrian crossing. If I’d had another young child at that time they would have also had to wait their turn and would have had to get on with things while I was dealing with the thrashing child who was trying to kick things off the table. Then on top of that I had the six year old who had to be dragged off me screaming to go into school every morning and ran off in parks. And these were ‘easy’ kids in contrast to some I knew of.

5. This is probably the most important one for me; factoring in the ages of the children we'd potentially foster, how would this impact our 2DC? I'm very interested to know this from either perspective.
   I think I’ve answered this one above. It will affect them massively. Their whole life will change and they likely won’t feel they’re your priority anymore. You might also find lots of jealous behaviour from your kids and/or the foster kids and they may well fight with each other.

6. Do you often get asked to consider children outside of your comfort zone in terms of ages, disabilities etc?
   It just depends which kids come into care. You may well get asked but you can say no.

7. Does the payment you get affect universal credit? I assume you don't get paid when you don't have a child in the house so is it totally separate as that money is meant to be spent on the child anyway?
   I’m not sure about UC as my husband has a full time job as well as us fostering so we don’t get any benefits. I know when a new pay structure came in a few years ago in my LA they did say that carers at the top level would be affected so might choose to stay on benefits and not get the payments but I’m not too sure about that. In my area you get the allowance for each child plus your fee which is also per child. There are also three levels of carers so the higher your level the higher your fee. I can’t remember now what was said about if you don’t have a placement as ours are long term so we’re never without a placement but I think it’s the lowest level fee as if you only had one child. So if level 1 is £100 a week and level 2 £150 a week a level 2 carer would get £300 each week with 2 children in care plus the children’s allowances. But if they don’t have a placement they would drop down to just £100 per week. Or possibly £150, I can’t remember what was decided in my LA- if you stay at your level’s fee for 1 child on weeks without kids or drop down to the bottom level.

Hope this info helps. My ultimate advice would be to wait until your children are at least both over 8 before you foster, preferably teenagers if you’re wanting foster children over the age of 2. They need to be able to understand that sometimes their needs will have to be placed behind the needs of the foster children and want to help you with them, rather than be jealous of them.

Does this blog help?
fosteringandadoptionwithphil.com/2021/02/07/yeah-but-what-about-your-own-kids/

Hi @heidei,

I am in a similar position with kids re; age and stage and am also considering Fostering, potentially at the start, respite care or short term. How have you got on? Did you progress or are you thinking of waiting a bit? I completely understand the reasons and opinions of those who feel it wise to wait till birth children are older but my worry is that by the time my kids get to the 8,9, 10 are I will have be done with the pre-school stage. I wondered if you felt like that too?

I also feel I would like I would prefer to look after pre-school age children at the start as (I'm struggling to phrase this) I I'm more comfortable and have experience at that stage now and I feel any potential behavioural needs may be less ingrained than that of a 8-10 y.
o. Any thoughts from others would be gratefully appreciated.

Not a foster carer but a social worker for children in care for over ten years.

I always hesitate when carers have their own children, for the reasons eloquently put above. Children in our care have so many issues that they cannot be equated with our own birth children in terms of emotional development, attachment, neurological conditions. Please take some time to read up around Trauma, Attachment & Therapeutic Parenting. Whatever your skills and experience as a parent, you often need to use very different strategies with children in care; this is obviously going to be hard when you use more conventional techniques with your own children.
I usually expect that a carer can give the majority of their time & attention to the child I am placing; this can only work if you are confident your own children need you less, or differently. The attention a teenager needs is so different from little kids that that can work better even though it might seem counter-intuitive.

I totally commend you for thinking about it, but I’d say it might not be the right time now so focus on reading & finding Facebook / internet sources of information; but by all means approach your local authority to find out more. We do need more carers!

Just accept that you cannot foster and expect to have a conventional but larger family. It’s a lifestyle and it will affect your children without doubt... some good some bad. But you cannot turn back the clock if it’s a bad experience, so you need to be very confident that your children have the resilience & security to get them through the tough times.

Ps they say the brain is hardwired by tour childhood experiences between the ages of 0-3 so do not assume that younger = easier or more likely to settle. In some ways it can mean ‘less obvious what the difficulties might be down the line, less able to express their feelings or needs’.