becoming a foster carer

[boris09]

I am thinking of becoming a foster carer. I have 2 children of my own aged 3yrs and 6months. Has anyone fostered whilst having young children? Is it a good idea? Also, I would have to give up my job. Is there and allowance that they give you? Is it enough to cover expenses and to compensate for giving up work?

Hi boris, I have been thinking of fostering also, my DS is 3 and I am unlikely to have any more children

I know there is an allowance, but I am not realy sure how it all works

Hopefully someone else will have more information

Hello, a friend of mine fosters. She has 2 of her own children (8 and 2). She loves it and has fostered many children, from weekend respite to long term care.

She gets a fairly generous allowance (enough that she doesn't go out to work) but "earns" every penny of it, she is always on the go! She has to co-ordinate contact visits with the birth family, court dates, social work visits etc.

She has even inspired me to look into it, she is amazing

Contact your county council fostering and care team for more info.

If you want to go into fostering your first contact should be with your local authority social services department. They will offer foster carers a basic allowance as well as money to buy clothes etc for the children. However there are also private fostering agencies all over the uk who generally offer a bigger allowance. However the two are very different. As local authorities are the ones who are responsible for the children in care, local authority foster carers are the first port of call when looking for a foster placement so carers are more likely to 'get' the ages and number of children best suited t them. Private agencies charge local authorities a lot for their placements so they tend to only get children that are considered difficult to place, teenagers etc. Therefore their foster carers get a bigger allowance but usually have more difficult ehaviours to deal with. It really depends on what would suit your situation best.
I would guess with young children it would be best for them to foster for the local authority.

hi atilla thats really handy to know - its something i'm interested in too but definately when my boys are a little older and i certainly wouldn't want it to be to their detriment. I don't think we'd be in a position to in the near future as we don't have the spare space.

We are just in the process of changing from foster carers to adoptive parents.

Usually they recommend a gap of at least two years between your youngest child and oldest foster child to avoid conflicts of intetest. If you have young children you can potentially foster older children but that has its own difficulties.

As for the allownaces - they are designed to cover costs rather than be a salary and in that respect we think thy are very generous (we get about £125/week/child but taht varies between authority and age of child). However there are some "professional" foster careres who do get paid a salary but they are usually experienced and have more challenging kids placed with them.

As already suggested contact your local authority and they will be able to give you much more information specific to your situation.

Bop

I know this thread is an old one, but thought I'd add my bit anyhow. Even if you could find an agency or local authority that would accept you, I'd say it was a bad idea for now. Wait a few years and think about it again after talking to other carers would be my advice. Apart from anything else, fostering takes up a huge amount of time and your own children would suffer. There is a lot of training, meetings and paperwork involved that you don't realise at the outset. Children with troubled pasts can be very unpredictable too, which means safety can be an issue. I've had an older child that I've known very well suddenly put my grandson's life at risk because they were in a bad mood. Totally unexpected but it happens.

My youngest child was 9 when I started fostering. If he hadn't been such an easy going personality I couldn't have done it even then. Even now he's a teenager I'm very careful about what placements I will accept as from experience I've learned what can go wrong. I don't get a salary but am a professional foster carer. I've had some very challenging children placed with me and I do a lot of training. I just couldn't imagine coping with two young children of my own too and doing it!

coping with two young children and a foster child will be daunting. i am a foster carer, i had my own child aged 1.5 fostered children aged 2 and 7 and i had to take them in a taxi to school in north london and a day nursery come home again with my child and then do it all again in the afternoon, i lost a stone in weight in the first month as the little boy has diahhroea and speech delay and eating issues, i did eventually move him to a nursery near me and the older child went ina taxi on her own with a supervisor to and back from school. i earned about 300 per child but i went to meetings had meetings in my home, had no social life and did it for 5 years, those children have been adopted now, but it is hard work and they all have emotional baggage or trauma, i forgot to say my son has special needs so i was always tired, but give it a go if you can cope....i am still on the list but now would only consider children much older than my son who can go to school on their own...

I am thinking about this as a possibility. I think I would like to do short-term care and prefarably only under 5s (as my DS is 4 and I don't know much about older children).

But I am wondering (and please don't get all frenzied, anyone) if it would count against me that one of my jobs is writing (perfectly legal) adult magazine articles.

I have looked into it a bit more and tbh it is not practical for me at the moment (DS too young, house is rented privately and landlord likely to object). But next year I might consider being a Homestart volunteer instead.