Fostering with young dc

[Penguins3]

Hi,

Does anyone foster or has fostered when they have their own young Dc?

I’m trying to get my head around the potential impact on a 5 yo. I know some short term placements can last up to 2 years. Does anyone have any experience of their own children dealing with the end of placements and the potential feelings of loss.

I don’t want to take in young children from unstable backgrounds, help them, but ultimately leave my own child in grief or with long term attachment issues.

Or, am I overly worrying and actually if your child’s from a stable background they will bounce back from the loss easily and it be a positive outcome on their lives.

Has anyone got any lived experience or words of wisdom?

@Penguins3

I’m an adoptive parent and now a foster carer with my first placement.

I waited until my son was 18, old enough to have an input into the decision and heading off to university before I started to foster.
We know many adoptive families who also foster as well, so he is very aware of the potential problems.
From what Ive observed from my friends, the kids seeem to cope with the comings and goings very well, but they are all a fair bit older than 5.

what you need to take into account as well is the effect of the child’s behaviour on your own child. If you foster very young children or babies this may not be such as issue. However I am currently on a training course with an FC whose own children are being very badly impacted by the behaviour of the foster child who is 5.
Have a look at Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Foster children take up a huge amount of time, additional to the normal day to day caring- reports and paperwork to complete, contact time with birth family, meetings with profesionals, reviews, training courses to do,
This week I have 3 reports to do, I had a three hour meeting with SWs, plus two phone calls with school yesterday a visit from a SW to the home today, another visit tomorrow,on a three hour training course on Thursday.
Its a bit busier than normal, but not that much.

I have a friend who went through the training, was (if I'm honest) a little bit sniffy about other fosterers who she perceived were doing it as a job, had one placement which broke her own young DC's hearts and never did it again. It is tough.

She wasn't allowed to foster anyone older than her youngest child so that's something to keep in mind (that may be region-specific though).

There is such a thing as respite foster care though (in my region anyway) where you have to be a qualified foster carer but you'll do weekend or holiday care only. This gives families with their own young DC a break and is a vital way of keeping placements going. Might that be something you could look at now, and then as your own DC gets older you can switch into full-time fostering?

I would maybe suggest doing short breaks only, so your child only experiences children coming for a few days at a time.

I think it’s really hard for them either living alongside a child where they’re negatively impacted, or building an attachment to a child who then leaves.

Thank you for your replies. We are thinking instead of short term, that we start with emergency and respite, until our dc is older and we understand their feelings to it all better. And your responses have solidified those thoughts.

Because of age gaps we are looking for under 3s. I suppose it all depends if there is a need for emergency or respite care for 0-2s/under 3s. If there isn’t then we will wait until dc is older. We don’t need continual placements, we’re not doing this for money but equally if there’s no need for what we can offer, we don’t want to waste the time of the sw.

We’ll have to see what they say, as we’re now narrowing down what we can offer so much I’m wondering if we’re more of a liability than a help?

@Penguins3

There is a shortage of all types of foster carers so I'm sure most LAs would welcome you.
The important thing is that you understand the challenges and risks and it sounds like you are developing that.
It's also important that you do it at the right time for you and your family.
Sadly there will always be children needing foster care so you can come back to it later when your child is older.
If you are considering emergency care remember that children are often removed in traumatic circumstances and may be brought to you literally with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
This would be covered in training but it would be worth you doing your own research on trauma and and therapeutic parenting

My friend's mum took in short term foster kids when he was a child. He hated it. He was jealous of the time and attention they took away from his parents. He freely says that it very much adversely impacted him.

I’m a foster carer, have been for 12 years.
my youngest was 13 when we started.
There is no way I would foster with a young child of my own.
Your fc is your priority, many are traumatised and require your full attention.
you will have many meetings and appointments, may need to facilitate contact with birth parents ( babies can be daily and contact centres may not be close to home)
You may have school runs to schools many miles away.
Enjoy your child, put all of your energy into them, there’s plenty of time to foster when they don’t need you so much.

It's obviously very different depending on your LA but I foster in northern Ireland and have done so since my son was 6.5yrs old. We've had 4 placements in 3yrs, 1 short term, 1 short term which has turned to long term and 2 respites. Only one of the 4 has bothered my son which was the short term one, we approached our social worker and told them the placement wasn't a good match for our family and was unsettling our son - we were told our sons wellbeing was of utmost importance to retain us as carers and so we gave 2 weeks notice to end the placement and the child moved on. The other 3 placements we've had he's been absolutely fine with especially a baby who he doted on - that was a respite. We just make sure that we talk over what's happening in child friendly terms with our son such as "we have a little baby coming to visit with us for a holiday for a week or two, what do you think about that?" If he were to ever say he wasn't happy with the situation then we would change things.