I am a foster carer AMA

[Fostercarer24]

Inspired by another thread here discussing fostering vs kinship care I wanted to share my experiences of fostering sibling groups and welcome any questions.

I wanted to explain my view of the relationship I have with the children who live with me. some of the comments made about foster families is that as soon as the child reaches 18 they are on their own and out of the family. Sadly this is often the case and I do see this happen. It is also sad that statistics show so many homeless people were in the foster system as children and the same with prisoners and offenders. A high proportion were in care. For me I hope to have the children I look after as my children forever.

I have a sibling group that I have in my care and they are like my own children. I intend to be there as their mother for the rest of my life. One of the children is over 18 and still lives at home with me. They have no intention of leaving home for the foreseeable future. I think they trust that I am not just a carer but that this is a permanent home.

I think that children should be with family wherever possible but it’s not always easy to find a family member willing to take children on particularly when there are several children who want to stay together.

the children in my care have birth family, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc but none have approached us to keep in touch with the children. They don’t send cards for special occasions and it’s unknown how they feel about the children being in care and I don’t know whether they feel that they have been pushed out of the children’s lives or whether they just have no interest in them.

i think that my family is very unusual and I wish that was not the case. I am devoted to the children and I love them dearly. I know that not all foster families are like mine. I would actually like to foster more children but social workers would not want me to take any more on because they want the children to have all my focus.

My life is very full. I have a lot of work to do and it’s not easy but it’s definitely very rewarding.

I’m trying to work out a plan to get financially stable so that when I’m older and retired I can somehow still support the children. Foster carers don’t have pensions and don’t have secure incomes.

Apologies if this is not very well written. It’s very late at night but I wanted to post because of the other thread about this topic from the viewpoint of connected family hearing that a family member is in care and not knowing what to do. My children are on the other side of this and it’s not talked about much.

also it’s only an anonymous forum that allows me to discuss anything about my family. I don’t talk to people in real life about this aspect of our lives. Feel free to ask me anything and I’ll answer as long as it doesn’t identify us. I have name changed but I’m here all the time.

Ok Maybe no one as interested as I am!

My kids are getting older and dh and I always talked about short term fostering when we have spare rooms. What would be barriers to this? We adopted our kids so already know that side of the fence but would like to short term/ emergency foster teens and older kids.

@Fostercarer24 Thank you so much for sharing your experience.
I hadn't realised what happens to many foster children when they turn 18, I had assumed they would stay until after uni years and beyond like many children living with biological their families. I think it's wonderful that your foster children can stay until they are ready.

Have the children ever expressed to you their disappointment that family members have not over the years sent gifts for special occasions or made any attempts at keeping in contact with them? Or do you think it may have made the situation easier in some way not to have that contact with extended family due to their connection to the birth parents?

I think it's a bit of a simplistic view to say 'I will keep the kids once they're 18 and so should every other foster carer.' A lot of children in care approaching 18 decide they don't want to stay with the foster carers. The pull of a return to birth family is strong, or they want a bit of independence in the world and to have their own place. I have one who will be 18 soon and while I would like him to stay he still sees birth parents and they want him back so he feels he should go to them. I would like to think he will always stay in touch with me through. He'll have been with me 12 years when he turns 18.

There's also the issue in my local authority that once the child turns 18 they are not classed as being fostered anymore. It's called something different and instead of the council paying the foster carer, the young adult pays rent directly to their (ex) carer from housing benefit. And as it's not classed as fostering, if I keep my young man and his younger sibling past 18, once they do move out I would have to go back to the beginning to be assessed to be a foster carer again. Which I do think is totally daft, and probably puts a lot of people off keeping teenagers past 18 as it's stressful and time consuming to have to jump through all the hoops to become approved as a foster carer again.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I didn't think you could foster for as long as 12 years - @Iloveagoodnap you must feel like they're yours having raised them through those formative years.
If they leave at 18 are they dependent on finding council flats etc?
Do you have biological children as well and if so how do you juggle everyone's needs?
How do they all get on? I can imagine it would take some very considerate caring kids to happily share their parents, plus is their jealousy sometimes from the foster kids whose parents couldn't look after them?

How many kids do you look after at the same time?

apologies for the long delay in coming back to the thread

I think that as adopters already you would be very much welcomed as foster parents. The questions you would be asked would likely be can you provide physical space for a child. How would your fostering affect the children you have already. How would you manage looking after a traumatised child who maybe has very different needs to your current children. Then the practical questions like managing ‘family time’ meetings with the foster child’s birth family. How would you manage different school runs; medical appointments etc. The assessment would cover all of these aspects and would probably be similar to the adoption process except that you may have been assessed for a particular child at that time.

I think maybe you’re meaning when your children have grown up and left home so in this case most of those questions won’t be as relevant. I don’t think there are barriers if you are enthusiastic and committed.

I have only ever looked after one child or a sibling group. I haven’t had different unrelated children with me at the same time. Some people do though but it’s more likely to be that they have a long term child who is settled and they have capacity to take more. I don’t know many other carers well so I don’t know exactly but it would be unusual to have more than 3 I think

I'm a foster carer too. I care for a DC with learning disabilities. He has lived with me from 5 years old and he's now over 18. We love him and he's treated like my own adult DC. He will likely live with me for many more years due to his learning disabilities. I also know a few foster carers who don't allow the foster children to stay with them after 18. I think it's very hard for these DC as they must realise their foster carers replace them with younger DC. I think care leavers should get more help and support at least until they are 25 as so many are vulnerable due to their early life experiences. I've also known some foster DC who go from foster carer to foster carer and never get a permanent placement for one reason or another.

I totally agree with you. And I didn’t mean it to sound simplistic at all in fact It’s the opposite- so complex.
I used to think it was so bad that children had to leave their carers at 18 but now I understand so much more of the complexity around this. I can see that the system is set up very poorly and relies on the good will of the carer to continue to support without local authority input.

i think you would be classed as keeping a lodger once the child reaches 18 and you are suddenly not a carer/foster parent anymore.

I’m sorry to hear that your young person is so torn between you and his parents. It must be very difficult for him. I’ve experienced exactly this before too with a couple of young people.

Thank you and yes it is unusual to foster for that long because a young child would normally be adopted if they couldn’t go back to their parents. What often happens though is that it takes a very long time for parents to be assessed and then other friends and family sought out and possibly assessed and by the time all of this happens if it doesn’t work out with family it’s sometimes better to leave the child with the same carer so that they can have less disruption in their lives.

i do have my own children but they are grown and left home. There is still some jealousy and resentment between everyone that sometimes can simmer. I had always wanted to foster and originally thought I could do it alongside raising my own children but I realised it would be too difficult for me to manage so I waited.

This is such an interesting question. I think the children are deeply hurt by the rejection of all their birth family. There was a time when it looked like they might be able to go and live with family members but it all fell through and they have been ignored ever since. This is what prompted me to make this thread. I was reading a discussion here started by someone whose nephews had been taken into care and the conversation about whether she should try to look after the children. And as I’ve mentioned, this is a subject that I can’t discuss in real life because I keep my children’s information very private. But the op on the other thread was so thoughtful and so were the other posters, so I wanted to talk about this situation myself.

Im not sure whether it’s made it easier for the children not to have contact with extended family. I tend to think not though because the rejection is going to have a long term impact on self esteem I think. No matter what I can do to mitigate it I don’t think I’ll ever make that better completely

Regarding the leaving care age, in my experience children from the age of around seventeen are encouraged to think about leaving home.(This does depend on their individual social worker) Their social worker hands over their case to the Leaving Care Team and the child has to complete a pathway plan. This is seen as the end of their time as a child in the family. This social worker will be someone the child does not know and they will have met them for the first time to talk about leaving care. Sometimes the young person is still at school and in the middle of exams but they have to have these talks because there are policies and guidance which says this is what happens.

Younger siblings seeing this happen can become anxious about their own position in the family home so it’s been very difficult to work around this part of the system.

If a child wants to stay with their carer after they turn 18 they are required to apply for benefits and claim Housing benefit which they then pay their carer as a housing fee. They no longer receive any fostering allowances- at least that is the case in my borough. They have to do this even if they are still in school. For example if they have a birthday early in the school year they will still be expected to claim benefits and attend the job centre for regular meetings and phone calls during school time. This means that the carer is now in the troublesome position of having the child pay directly to live in the home. This I think is very unfortunate and unless the carer is in a secure financial position then they have no option but to take this course.

as you can tell, I think the system is unfair on carers and young people who could feel that the carer just has them for financial gain- a view that the birth parents will often have too- but realistically there has to be payment of some sort to help support the family. This puts everyone in a difficult position.

On a positive note- if a young person does want independence and their own home as @Iloveagoodnap says, then they are supported by the leaving care team to get their own council property so I don’t mean to imply they are cut off from all support. This can be a huge help and give them security especially considering the general housing situation and cost of living. So this is a big benefit and a way that young people are recognised as needing- and deserving extra help.

i think the main issue is the uncertainty around being able to live at home for longer.

This is really interesting, I had no idea at 18 they would have to apply for benefits in education, how ridiculous! How old are the children you foster? You sound like a wonderful foster mum!

I totally agree with you and 25 would be so much more reasonable. The young person could finish education and have a far better chance at the start of their adult life.
And yes I’ve known many carers who say the child must leave at 18. I used to think this was terrible- I still think it’s very sad- but I now see the position you can be put in as a carer and if this is your job and you have one spare room then the 18 year old who you have to fund is more likely to be encouraged to leave and replaced with a younger child. I would not do this myself but I’m less judgmental than I used to be. I can recognise the strain on the carer who may have had to give up work to look after children etc.

Ah thank you. My daughter is 18 now. She’s sitting with me here in the kitchen at 2am so I’m not sure if that makes me a good mum actually!
but yes she had to miss school on several occasions to attend benefits appointments at the job centre. In the middle of exams and other times. She’s been extremely stressed. But from the moment she turned 18 I received no allowances for her at all. And children don’t get cheaper at this age!

sounds great! Nothing beats a conversation in the kitchen does it somehow! Guess it’s early for an 18 year old 😂

It’s true. The kitchen is the heart of the house and had held some very serious conversations as well as fun times. And yes probably early night for both of us really but I have a meeting in the morning so must get to bed!

I remember going on a course about choices at 18 when my two foster kids were much younger and being horrified when the message was very much 'they must apply for benefits as soon as they're old enough.' I wouldn't want my birth child to start off adult life reliant on benefits so I'm not sure why that's seen as the best thing for young people in care. Ideally they should be supported through education and into getting a job and being able to pay for a home without needing benefits. I'm not entirely sure how that would work but possibly just still being classed as being in foster care for the first few years of adult life, so the carer still gets payment for them until they have a wage over a certain amount.

This is a really good idea. The benefits situation is so bad. It’s purely to fund care

I missed this sorry.

it is really difficult to look after emotionally abused children but there is a lot of evidence that adverse life experiences can be worked through and recovered from. So it’s not that a child will always be damaged for life. That’s the main role of the carer I would say. It’s the therapeutic caring that hopefully gets the child through the bad times.

I don’t usually have any strong feelings of anger towards parents because usually they have been neglectful/ abusive towards their children because they have had no example of good parenting themselves. parents are normally very shocked that the children are removed from them. I’ve only ever experienced one parent who accepted they’d made a mistake and tried to put it right.

I do get angry when I read of animal abuse or child abuse cases but with most of the children I’ve looked after the reasons the children are removed are complex.

I am disgusted and feel angry if a child has been sexually abused for example but often that will be amongst other sorts of abuse and neglect and the parent will often still have access to the child. So you can’t be the way you might want to be when you see the parent.

Some parents don’t believe that children have the right to complain about them and are very aggrieved that the child has spoken out against them. This causes massive problems with reparations and if the parent can’t recognise their behaviour is not acceptable then there is less chance of the child being able to return home. In this way it is often the child who is directly blamed for splitting the family.

yes there is a lot of training for foster carers and it’s mostly about therapeutic care and understanding childhood trauma.

Rehabilitation- do you mean the children return in home? This is really good if the parent is able to make the changes they need. If this is going to happen the child will see the family more frequently and this will lead to their eventual return.

i do believe that children’s mind can be reprogrammed to some extent. I’ve been encouraged by hearing and reading research on the subject.

Do you not have staying put as an option for over 18s?
Our LA also have shared lives for young people with disabilities.
Foster children have a right to support upto the age of 25.

They can argue for staying put but the LA do not like to pay the carer so they try to get the young person to move out of home. Also Staying Put provides a small fee for carer but does not pay any allowances at all for the young person.
There is no chance that a young person would get support until 25. The year they turn 18 is when allowances stop and they have to sign on at the job centre and are told they are no longer looked after by the local authority. My 18 year old still has another year at school. They were told that if they stayed with me they would be a lodger and not a family member. And that they would need to pay for their lodgings from benefits or even from student finance when the time comes. They were told very clearly that they were no longer in care and that I was no longer their foster parent.

they were also told that they do not go to school. They must call it college or 6 th form. Despite the fact it was the same school they had attended since they were 11

this has happened to 2 of my children so far and will happen to another next year.