As anyone who fosters knows; fostering can, from time to time, loom large in your home.It's why Blue Sky sends one of their social workers to visit for a heart-to-heart once a month - or more often if needed - to make sure you're looking after yourself as well as your child.No-one's alone in fostering.I was putting a wheelie bin out when a nice couple walked past with a dog exactly like ours.We...
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Monday, March 24, 2025
A MESS IN THE LIVING ROOM
It's never any fun coming down ion the morning to a mess.But once you have a foster child who's old enough to stay up watching TV after you've taken yourself to bed it's inevitable.Eldest is now old enough and responsible enough. The TV has all the parental controls but there are channels that know who wants to watch what and how to programme films and shows that are groovy but safe.Nevertheless...
Monday, March 17, 2025
GIVE FOSTERING A GO
I got chatting with a lady from the other end of our road, and the subject of fostering came up.She asked me a question along the lines of; "Do you think fostering's for me?"It's a hard question to answer, obviously.I remembered a story I'd read in a children's book as a kid. It was about the Chinese wise man Confuscious.In the story a person goes up to Confuscious and asks; "There are...
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
SURFING AND FOSTERING
It's easily the most asked, and also most difficult question in fostering."When am I going home?"For one thing there's nothing bigger in the minds of foster children than going home.Equally, there's no bigger question we have to answer.Kyle asked me a couple of days ago. I had said at teatime that we were taking everyone on a summer mini-break. He hung back when I said people could get down...
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
DEAL OR NO DEAL
Kids like to look cool, I was the same. Foster children are no different, why should they be?I took our eldest - "Alicia" - to a gathering at Blue Sky for foster parents with older kids. My social worker had told me discreetly that some teenage foster children become a bit introverted and tend to spend a lot of time in their room instead of with friendship groups.Easy to see why. When a child...
Saturday, February 15, 2025
A GAME OF SARDINES
Going back a few years we had a young lady stay with us, Nicky. I've touched on her story once before In the blog, but something came up yersterday which jogged my memory of her.She'd had a terrible childhood. Both her parernts had learning difficulties and had profound hearing loss. Her father was serving 10 years in prison for a crime against another member of the family, that's all I'll say...
Friday, February 14, 2025
I'M NOT WASHED UP!
Fostering is all about helping a child from outside your family feel comfortable in your home.How you do this depends on a) understanding your own home, and b) understanding the foster child.It's all about working out where the child fits.I want to flag up the task of WASHING UP.Age plays a huge part in the whole integration thing, as does personality.Then there's the matter of how much damage,...