WE'RE AVAILABLE

A few words about how it is when you're up and waiting and hoping for your next placement. It's a wow. Heck of a buzz.

Even more of a wow when it's your first ever placement.

That's where we are now (the former), and it is what it is.

We've been there a lot of course, but it's still what it is.

First off, we have to try not to feel let down or disappointed when the phone doesn't ring at 9.00am on day one when we're available. 

We're so excited and enthusiastic we can get frustrated that they don't simply send a bus-load of kids over, hey we are up for it.

When you start up you don't go onto the system until you're ready, qualified and available.  Sometimes your social worker will have a respite case in mind for you to get you started, it's what happened to us. Our Blue Sky contacts had got to know us and also knew of a child in care whose foster parents were due a weekend break. They arranged for the child to accompany his foster mum to a support meeting they knew I'd attend. They left no stone unturned.
By the way, when I say they'd got to know us I remember taking a call from a Blue Sky senior person with regard to something or other and she finished the chat by saying "I've been reading your file every month as it grows, I feel as if I know you inside out even though we've never met."
I found that very re-assuring.

Then there's the business of getting matched. They aren't going to call unless there's a good chance of a fit. 

People come into fostering having heard that there's a massive need for carers. There is.  If you're thinking about it, I beg you to do it; make contact, begin the process of approval. 

But just because you walk out of the final meeting with your approval it doesn't mean there's a match for you out there straight away.

One of the things that happens generally is that the phone rings and a voice asks if you can take a child, and you get a few details. If you say yes you then get an email with a load of information about the child. In our case I'd phone my partner and we'd chat a bit. Then I'd go back and say we were up for the child.

Then it's the local authority's decision, they usually have several options in front of them.

Sometimes you get a phone call saying the child has gone somewhere else.

You get a whiff of rejection, but Blue Sky explain the thinking; I can remember things such as ;

"The authority went with a family whose home is near the child's school."

"They found a Muslim family for them." (We're not Muslim, but had been willing).

Even;

"The authority changed their mind and decided to keep the family together but monitor them closely."

Geography is the biggest reason, in my experience, that a child gets placed elsewhere. If a child needs schooling and Contact with their significant others, the foster parents don't really want a fifty mile round trip ten times a week.

So, that's where we are now.  Nearly. Our foster child is going home soon and we're ready to take another.

"We're available."

Can't wait!