If your parents fostered a child when you were young…

[runningpram]

How did it affect you? I would love to provide a safe home for a child but i have DC under ten myself and work full time - although there is scope to reduce my hours. Would fostering have a negative impact on DC?

Fostering is a job. Lots of meetings etc.
You can't just bung FC in holiday care etc.
I wouldn't have thought you could easily continue other work?

(Sorry it doesn't answer your question.)

I was fine, but it was very different circumstances as fostering was my Mum's full time job at the time. I think working as well would be very difficult. The children will come with very complex needs.

Not quite the same as fostering, but when my husband was a kid, his mum became a legal guardian to two other children (no relation to them) who had lost their parents. They were all under 10 at the time. It proved extremely difficult for him - 2 deeply traumatised children crashing into his life, ganging up on him and changing every aspect of his existence. I know the mother did a wonderful thing, but it caused lifelong issues for him.

My parents fostered my whole childhood. It was hard. The children were often deeply traumatised, with significant emotional and behavioural difficulties. I think a lot of people's idea of fostering is very idealistic with no thought for the reality. Your child will definitely be impacted as you never know exactly what you're getting yourself into until a child is placed with you. And often the information you receive about a potential placement will be incomplete or inaccurate.

I am very proud of my parents, they helped countless children over the years that they fostered. And I think my brother and I learnt a lot about empathy and how fortunate we were along the way. But I would never foster myself.

I think the rules have changed in some areas so the foster child must be younger than your youngest dependant child. Depending on where you live they might not be able to give you more than emergency foster care if your dc is so young. And that brings with it it’s own challenges.

I think (limited experience of working in child protection) that you need to go in with your eyes wide open. These children will be very vulnerable, they will need to attach to you, how will your children feel about that?

We ended by default fostering a young lady aged 16. (Long story)
She married our son, he went to university so it was not incestuous.
They have been together over 22 years.
Our daughter is her sister.

We fostered 3 children that came to us in an emergency from a close relative. They were with us for 2 years in the end.

My youngest DD was hugely impacted and found it hard as the children had multiple issues, targeted her as the ‘odd one out’ a lot and were jealous of her security of living with parents so would often break or steal her things.

The social worker reinforced this by turning up with presents for the 3 foster children and nothing for DD, which I understand was not her responsibility but when everything I provided for my DD I also equality provided for the foster children it made her feel that she was always the one missing out.

She loved having them here for the most part, despite these problems, but after they returned home she did say she was very relived and expressed how hard she found it but hadn’t wanted to speak up as she knew the children would then end up in the system and she cared about them.

We have said we will foster again in the future and look into mainstream fostering, but not until my youngest child is an adult.

One of the underestimated impacts is the disruption to our own children’s attachment. My sons lost 4 siblings, in all. The last two were easier to let go of because life had become very hard- we were all struggling and it was not going well. One little girl we had from birth and DS2 found it very hard when she went for adoption. He got weepy at the sight of dc that reminded him of her.

It’s not easy.

Thank you for sharing your experiences- they are food for thought