FOSTERING; YOU MAKE YOUR OWN LUCK

We're hoping for a new placement in the New Year, with a bit of luck. Who knows if a child who needs a home will get us and it turns out to be lucky for them? One can but hope. We have one spare bedroom. It's small to be honest, but some foster children like compact rooms, they feel safe, snug, cosy.  Our house is hectic but I've often found that foster children like the company of other foster...

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ENJOY WHAT YOU WISH FOR

We're entering a couple of weeks of a special time in fostering, namely Christmas. I'm told that more children come into care over Christmas than at any other period. Blue Sky social workers tell me (and some would say their observations are merely anecdotal, but I like anecdotal, it means it's what someone has seen with their own eyes, and that's my kind of evidence) that chaotic families come...

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS

When I was a kid there was nothing on the roads on Christmas Day, just other kids on Christmas bikes. Well, the times, as we all know, are a'changing. Christmas Day is now almost like any other on the roads. Thanks to the breakdown of the nuclear family. It's not that long ago there was almost no such thing as divorce, breakups or single parents. Everyone stayed in on Christmas Day and went for...

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CHRISTMAS AND FOSTERING

I've been fostering long enough to know that I'll never know what my head makes of Christmas and fostering.  But my heart loves it. A lot depends on the specifics of who you have staying with you and their story. We had a lad who had 14 stepdads. Incredibly, his mother had 15 children by 15 different men so he had a real dad and 14 stepdads. And he was cool about this because somehow the...

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CHRISTMAS FAIR

Helped at the school Christmas Fair. Well, one of the schools we are using  at the moment. School A is where out eldest "real"  child goes, school B is where one of our foster children goes as does one of our "real" children. That's a fostering complication I'll come back to another time. The thing about the Christmas Fair was this; the man running a stall next to me was in fostering....

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THE JOYS OF TRAINING

Went to a really useful Blue Sky training session. I remember when I first got going in fostering I wasn't sure about training. I was never top of the class back in my schooldays and getting my feet under a school desk again...well it didn't sit easy. But things have changed in the world of education; or maybe learning is a different concept when it comes to training. Thing is; it's more than plain...

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HELLO TO THE WI... IT'S FOSTERING CALLING...

                                                                   Hey! I'm just taking a breather from talking about our recent...

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I'D BEEN BEHAVING LIKE A MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC...

The emergency placements, which I've talked about on the last few posts, were found a home the following afternoon. Amazing really; social services managed to find a foster parent who could take all three.  We weren't told much about where they were going, that's normal. I'll come back to...

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NINE FOR BREAKFAST

This is a kind of a rolling blog on a recent emergency placement of 3 sibs with us. They are gone now - which is why I have a chance to blog. I kept records of their stay, which Blue Sky RETAIN; I tweak any information which would allow then to be identified. Last time I talked about the early...

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5.50AM; "WHEN ARE WE GOING HOME?"

We didn't quite get through the night. It's not unheard of for new foster children to need you during the first night. So I tend to sleep in my dressing gown and with our bedroom door half open, and with their bedroom doors open too. Sure enough I heard some stirring, voices. I checked the...

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1.25AM AND ONLY ONE TOOTHBRUSH

Eldest foster child uses up the whole packet of bacon and puts a pyramid of sarnies (white bread, of course) on the kitchen table. They pile in. I ask their names. Why oh why do chaotic parents give their children glitzy handles? Emmanuel. Lotus. Ferdinand. As though kids are just a bit of...

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