Part-time fostering - Anyone with any experience thoughts?

[mascaraohara]

I saw an add in my loacal paper for foster parents, I've always been interested but don't have the room or the capacity (as I work full time).. However, this advert said that you could get involved on a part time basis - even to the point of offering a service one day/weekend a month... I was just wondering if anybody had any experience of this, how you found it, what your circumstances are (if you don't mind disclosing), how it affected your lives and that of your child/children etc...

In fact any info. would be useful.. I'm kind of thinking that I can't do it but I would like to find out more before I dismiss the idea completely..

Mil is fostering but it is full time. I guess part time could be to give these fosters a break or maybe i am wrong. I will ask mil about it.

My mum fosters, but full time. It isn't easy. She has had a lot of trouble with the boy she has now. She enjoys doing it, and she enjoys being able to make even the smallest of steps towards getting him settled, but when he kicks off she feels like she has been hit in the face with a brick, and as though it is her failiure.

I suppose in some way she went into it thinking she could get the kids to turn their lives around, and some are just too stuburn to let her help them so her vision of it was wrong. But, when her boy does the right thing and chooses the right thing even though the wrong thing is right there in front of him, it makes it completely worth it.

I think it would be completely different to do it part time though, for one thing, you wouldn't get emotionally attached, so it wouldn't be such a personal relationship, but if you feel you could do it, then go for it, stop looking for excuses not to! - Good luck

I am interested in hearing someone who is doing it part time.

I would like to hear about it really...

I seriously don't know if I have the capcity to be honest. Would have to think long and hard for everyone's sake - not least my own dd's who only gets my time at the weekend anyway..