If you foster with an agency as opposed to with your Local Authority you get better support. OK that's just my opinion, but it's how it seems to me.

I'm not knocking Local Authority care and support of foster parents, but if a foster parent is with an agency they get not one but two social workers offering help, advice and support.

A quick word to non-UK readers of this blog, obviously different countries have different systems, but they're probably fairly similar.

In the UK our country is divided up into Local Authorities which govern local regions of the UK.  They're mostly based on counties. They don't have as much legslative power or authourity as US states have, but they control their own department that deals with fostering, and in the UK that department is called "Social Services".

So what happens here is that if a child needs to come into care it's the Local Authority and their Social Workers who enforce that. 

However, Local Authorities often have a limited number of potential foster carers on their books and that's when fostering agencies can help.

Agencies - and Blue Sky is standout - nurture foster parents from the get-go to approval, puting time, expertise and investment into ensuring that their carers are primed, ready, and - crucually set to be shepherded day-on-day by Blue Sky.

I didn't realise the hard thing of this until way baxck we were about 6 weeks into our fostering. What happened was this;

A girl had been placed with us who had endured many disturbing things in her real home. Khala.

Khala was sort of pre-triggered. "Triggering" is when a person is made to be upset by something that reninds them of something.

A child who gets triggered generally takes a while to become upset; they usually ruminate fof 10-15 minutes about things that have happened, then they get upset.

Khala was, what we labelled "Pre-triggered." Ready to go ballistic almost every moment. 

Me arriving at school to pick her up wearing a hat she hated: anger.

A key in the front door - meltdown.

Being offered a bag of crisps to hold her until tea; hysteria.

So. A tricky one. They all are, mostly.

The Local Authority Social Worker showed up and wanted to know all about Khala, which was cool, we got that; the child is paramount.

The day after next our Blue Sky Social Worker turned up.

And wantwed to know about US.

Look, of course she cared about Khala, but she knew that Khala was the main responsibilty of the `Local Authority. 

And Blue Sky's thing is their foster parents.