Aaaaghhh here comes Christmas.  This is a hard quarter of the year for carers, and looked-after children; starts with Halloween. Then it's fireworks, then Christmas. These events are big for our children, and for us. They are about the three pinnacle home events in the child's calendar (excepting their birthday), squeezed into 7 weeks. For them, each evokes  memories of what happened...

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You just want to give this carer, who commented after the last post about us carers getting too sensitive, a hug. She (I'm guessing it's a "she", forgive me if you are a "he") commented: "Oh how true this is. I especially felt it when a placement broke down due to increasing violence against me. I was made to feel inadequate and told the child would be placed with perfect foster carers (I am a single...

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Interesting comment I noticed: "I am a new foster carer and find your blog brilliant. Although I'm fairly new..., already had some great experiences but also felt the full force of bitching and back stabbing !!" Brief and to the point. I think I know what the anonymous carer might be concerned about.  New foster carers are braced for the challenges of taking a troubled child into our home,...

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My Grandparents had a spaniel when I was very little, and Gran decided she needed a course of Bob Martins tablets (the spaniel that is). Judy, the dog, used to live on a diet of dog biscuits and leftovers. Anything put on her white tin plate, she'd wolf it down. Grandad brought a whole rabbit home one night, and Judy scoffed the bits such as...you don't want the details. They decided to...

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QUIZ. CAN YOU IDENTIFY THIS MAN? You know him, but not by his real name, which is Graeme.  He has no idea who his father is. He was adopted at the age of four months. His new parents adopted another baby, a girl. That's when he thinks they told him he was adopted: "One of the sharpest memories of my childhood is how my mother explained to me what adoption meant. I can’t remember how old...

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When the phone rings... ...and it's Blue Sky's placement guy. You know your life might change a lot and fast. I was standing in the playground waiting for a looked after child to come out of school on Thursday, raining. The mobile rings. It's the Blue Sky placement guy. The placement guy is the person who's contacted by a Local Authority Social Services when a child or children need a foster home....

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Thought I'd share this with you... One of our children brought spelling homework home, to do with adding "ing" and "le" on the ends of words. About 30 in all. See if you thought what I thought, from the point of view of a looked after child. Run Sit Hit Fit Hitting Fitting Slapping Needle Wobble Trouble Sensible Terrible Horrible See, with this particular child and words; I was on the phone at...

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ANATOMY OF A TANTRUM We'd had a good Sunday, looking forward to swimming. This fostered child, age seven, likes swimming. We make swimming the focus of Sunday, so the later we go swimming the longer the happiness of looking forward to it. The morning slipped by sweetly, we got a few jobs done, we and the child pottered happily. We swam, came home and brewed some hot chocolate which went down well. I...

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LOVE ACTUALLY I was at a Blue Sky support meeting, quite recently, and we carers were asked to take it in turns to talk about what we like about fostering.  The comment that stuck in my mind was the lady who was there with her partner, they'd been fostering for some time. "We've had two of ours turn up at the doorstep ages after they've left us, and said 'Thank you'. Driving home I thought...

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