Thursday, December 28, 2023

THE WAY THEY BLOOM

All parenting is fraught with endless fears and trepidations.It's not until you look back that you can separate the many joys from the many mini-traumas that beset our most important role in life, namely trying to be a good parent.If you can do it halfway well with your own children you can pull it off for other people's children. BTW, you don't need to have had children of your own to foster...

Monday, December 18, 2023

FAST FOOD JUST GETS BETTER

 The Covid pandemic was a challenge to all, and presented fostering with some unique issues.It seemed obvious at the time that Covid would be followed by a pandemic of mental health problems, and sadly that does seem to be happening, with more and more children needing a foster home. And I'm not pretending Covid is over, it's going on still in so many ways, as is the spread of anxieties...

Thursday, December 14, 2023

CHAOS

 I'm in danger of losing count of the number of social workers we've had guiding and supporting us in our fostering. Not because they come and go, but because I've been fostering longer than I care to remember, and social workers, like everybody else, move on, move up or sideways, pause to start a family.They've almost all been brilliant, we had one way back who wasn't quite the ticket. She was...

Monday, December 11, 2023

THE ONLY THING THAT NEVER CHANGES IS THAT EVERYTHING CHANGES

 Dear me, you're always learning in fostering.My go-to opening line when I get asked to speak to would-be foster carers is; "I've been fostering for 30 years. And I'm going to stick at it until I get it right."New stuff is taxing.But if it's new and good… y'gotta do the work.Sounds like I'm on about something humungous? Well it is... and it isn't.Every single thing we fostering folk do for the...

Saturday, December 09, 2023

ALERT TO THE POSITIVES

 So, this happened, one night a couple of days ago.In fostering one's sleeping is determined not a little by what sort of a household one has at any given time.We had a teenager for a whole summer once, a lovely lad, who simply couldn't sleep at night. He was perfectly at ease with staying awake down in our living room. He was ultra considerate, never woke us, tidied the room up as dawn began...

Saturday, December 02, 2023

NEVER A DULL MOMENT

 Chris came to us in the middle of the night.We'd agreed to be emergency carers at the time. We're not on the list of emergency carers right now partly as we used up our last spare bedroom with a 'normal' placement, 'normal' meaning a child who was set to stay with us for a good while.People don't realise the degree of flexibility a fostering family can have. Each fostering family is unique,...