Fostering and holidays abroad?

[bellylaughs]

Hi, my family and I are considering fostering in the next couple of years.

One of the things holding us back slightly is that we have a home in Spain that we love spending time in. We realise we wouldn’t be able to go as often but what about the occasional half term/summer holiday? Is it very complicated to get permission every time or does it depend completely on the child’s circumstances?

We don’t want to give it up completely as it’s a huge part of our family life but is it stupid even considering fostering if we still want to use our home in Spain sometimes. We would love nothing more than spending time there with FC?

It would depend I think. If you have a lot of short term placements you can go in-between them if you can be flexible about travel. However short term placements can have a habit of turning into much longer term placements! If you have longer term placements you could get respite care for any child you have, then go away but most FC hate doing this. If the child has a passport and the parents agree then you could take them. If you ended up with a child who was longer term and had a permanence order in place then they would be deemed part of your family and you could take them away. It really depends what sort of fostering you want to do. I am not a FC I am just a retired SW who sits on fostering panels. Hopefully some actual FC will come along soon to give you their experience.

@UCOinanOCG Thank you for your advice. I wouldn’t consider putting them in respite for my own holiday desires so that’s out of the question.

We are considering short term initially but as you said, I realise they can change to long term!

We have had various experiences. We had a short term placement where the parents were opposed to us taking the children on holiday but the LA overuled them and they came with us. We had another short term placement where we had a foreign holiday booked before the children arrived and they didnt have passports so it was out of the question for them to some with us. We arranged for our back up carers to move into our house and they looked after the children in our absence. This exact scenario repeated itself last August with another group of siblings who we had. We have just booked two further foreign holidays in August and October. We cant take the children because they still havent got passports (even though we have been hounding the LA for over 12 months now). We are about to book for Aug 2022 and are paying the deposit for them to go in the hope that the LA will finally have sorted it by then. I often hear that it is wrong to go on holidy without f/c as you are treating them differently than you would your own children. Well as a couple we have often gone on holiday without our own children when they were growing up .

When your LA or agency have your brief to find a suitable match just include this information. So in the situations described above when we had holidays booked the LA were told by our agency that they had a suitable couple for their children but there was a pre-existing holidy booked on x dates.

Finally note that some agencies specifically provide holiday periods for foster carers (sometimes paid) and will provide cover.

In conclusion assuming there are available passports most LAs would be very happy for you to take children on family holidays. Just be careful that you dont travel to a country where the children have passports/nationality of that country where the country does not recognise UK care orders . We nearly made that mistake !

It would very much depend on the placement.

If children have regular contact sessions with birth family (this can sometimes be say three times a week) then it can be more difficult.

Some children have no contact with their birth family!

We’ve never had any problem with holidays. We’ve taken our Fs all over the world with us.
Always has to be in school holidays though.
You need to get permission from LA and they issue you with a letter that you need to carry with you giving permission for medical attention.
You can run into problems if there is an issue with getting a passport for the child(asylum seekers, parents heritage) but mostly it is fine.

Some difficulty would be in the planning and booking

Child needs a valid passport if they don’t already have one it can take a long time to get this in a place for a foster child / or if it has not been handed in by the family.

Booking tickets etc for flights when you don’t know who will be living with you is quite a challenge!

Foster child sleeping arrangements need to meet the requirements of the placement - usually own separate room.

In theory it is fine and desirable to include your Forster child in holidays like everything else

However in practice child might not cope well with holidays / the changes in routines etc and this might really change them for you from a break to harder than being at home!

Thank you all, some really interesting thoughts to consider. I’m glad you lot haven’t told me I’m mad for considering it at least!

No not at all!
Your fc should be part of your family.
Our child came to us aged 4, I’d forgotten holidays were such hard work with a little one. Add to that they were undiagnosed adhd/asd/pda/spd and you can imagine the fun we had.
However now they absolutely love their holidays and we all enjoy them so much.
As pp said make sure you get their passport sorted out.
Given that you have a holiday home I would do it as soon as the child arrives. It is their right to have a passport paid for by LA, if they move on they can take it with them.

@Cassimin thanks for your encouraging words!