Take time to care

Warwickshire’s Fostering Service will be holding information events later this month to get more people to think about becoming foster carers.

The events are all taking place during Foster Care Fortnight (13-26 May), a trademarked national campaign from the Fostering Network to raise the profile of fostering and encourage more people to consider this rewarding career.

Kelly Furness from the county council’s fostering service said: “Currently there are around 670 children looked after by Warwickshire County Council. This number has increased steadily over the past few years so demand for quality placements is high and we are always keen to recruit new carers to give these young people the benefit of a stable family life.

“With this in mind, staff from the fostering team and some of the county’s foster carers will be available at local events to give friendly, informal advice and information.”

Information stalls will be at Rope Walk Shopping Centre, Nuneaton on Friday 17 May – 9am-12pm and Clock Towers Shopping Centre, Rugby on Friday 24 May – 11am – 2pm.

In addition the service will be holding their first ever Fostering Family Fun Day on 19 May from 11.30am to 3.30pm at The CHESS Centre, Cedar Road, Nuneaton.

There will be a variety of activities going on through the day including circus skills, a magic show, balloon modelling, decorating, storytelling, games, nail painting and more.

Presentations on fostering for Warwickshire will also be taking place and fostering information will be available. The free event is open to all families who foster and those who might be thinking about it.

Kelly is clear that almost anyone has the potential to be a foster carer, she added: “We are looking for foster carers who are single or couples; with or without children, retired, unemployed or working, so we can find the best match for every child or young person. What matters most is that you have time, space, commitment, patience, a caring nature and skills to work with children and their families.

We are particularly interested in hearing from people who may be looking to foster teenagers and really hope people considering fostering will pop along to an event or get in touch during Foster Care Fortnight to find out more.”

There are different types of foster care, depending on the needs of children and young people.

They include short term foster care from a couple of months to a couple of years, to permanent foster care where a child who cannot live with their own family stays with a family throughout childhood and onto adulthood.

Whilst Warwickshire Fostering Service wants to hear from anyone interested in foster care, it is particularly important for them to find people willing to look after, teenagers, siblings and children older than eight who need permanent placements. Parent and child placements are also required so the service would like to speak to anyone with space to house these families.

Full training and support is given to foster carers, who are matched to one or more of the different foster care schemes, depending on what suits their lifestyles and commitments. Carers are paid an allowance which reflects the real cost of looking after a child.

If you are interested in finding out more about Fostering for Warwickshire but cannot attend the above events please contact Central Fostering on freephone 0800 4081556 or register your interest online at www.warwickshire.gov.uk/fostering.

To read about the experiences of Warwickshire foster carers and looked after young people click on the case studies tab at the top of the page.

First fostering funday was a hit

Over 50 foster carers, prospective carers, children and young people attended the Fostering Services first ever Fostering Funday on Sunday 19 May.

The event was organised as part of this years Foster Carer Fortnight, a national campaign organised by Fostering Network.  Entertainment was provided by John the Juggler, Benj the Balloon Artist, Salamander Magic and Anchor FM.

People were also able to see presentations on fostering for Warwickshire and talk to members of staff from the service and experienced foster carers.  The fostering service will be busy speaking to people who attended the event to discuss taking their interest in fostering for Warwickshire forward.

Lots of fun was had by all and money was raised for the Barradell Fund for looked after young people and carer leavers from the sale of refreshments.

Fostering questions at Rope Walk

Thank you to all our enquirers from today’s event at Rope Walk in Nuneaton.  We had a good couple of hours with people coming to visit us to get information and ask questions.

Questions were based on practical issues focusing on bedroom space and time availability to care for children, as well as questions about the fostering process itself.  3 people made formal enquiries and many people took further information to think about and discuss with their families.

To celebrate this year’s Foster Care Fortnight we will be holding our first ever Fostering Family Fun day on 19th May 11.30-3.30 at The Chess Centre, Cedar Road, Nuneaton. There will be a variety of activities available on the day including circus skills with John the Juggler, magic show, balloon modelling, biscuit decorating, storytelling, games, nail painting and much more!!

Presentations on fostering for Warwickshire will also be taking place at 12.30 and 2pm and information on Fostering for Warwickshire will be available. The event is open to all families, including fostering families and families who might be thinking about fostering in the future. Come along to this free event and have some fun!!

New foster carers – Michelle and James

Michelle and James live in Nuneaton, they have a 9 year-old daughter and a dog called Stanley. They have been fostering for Warwickshire for a little over a year and are approved for a placement of one child short term and respite aged 4 -11 years.  Since January 2012 they have had three placements, two short term and one respite placement and the children have been aged 4 -8.

Explaining what inspired them to become foster carers, James said: “Michelle and I had been thinking about fostering for a number of years. We have always had an awareness that some children don’t get the childhoods they deserve and we wanted to help. I spoke to someone from the fostering team at an information stall at in Nuneaton and ask for some information on fostering. At this time our daughter was too young, but two years later we reassessed the practicalities and the emotional impact and we decided to apply to foster.”

Talking about the training they received to help them become approved foster carers, Michelle continued:  “Part of the approval process involved us taking a course – Skills to Foster – to help us consider the role. Each sessions of the training gave us more encouragement. It was a real eye opener and we learnt a lot about the things some children go through, but this made us more determined to try and help.

“We were surprised by the diversity of the applicants on the course, they were all different, with different backgrounds and this showed that children need all types of people to become their carers. We found the information we learnt to be useful both during our assessment and when we started with our first child in placement.”

Dealing with challenges is part of the job for a foster carer. James outlined how family life changed for them. He said: “It was a huge learning curve for us all, not only having someone new living in the house, but adapting as a family to help meet their needs whilst working as part of a team with other professionals.  We learnt the importance of understanding the child and understanding why they may be behaving in a certain way.

“For our first placement we had to try and make sure everyone in the house was comfortable, ensuring we had enough time and space for everyone. The first child we cared for had a learning need so his behaviour could be quite challenging and we had never dealt with this before.  Also our daughter found it frightening to start with as she sometimes thought that she had caused the outburst so the first month in particular was very hard and we did question what we were doing.

“However we recognised the young person’s needs and decided we had to change the way we did things as a family and this often meant either one of us doing something with our daughter and the other doing something with the foster child. I did a lot of research and we attended some fostering courses and the huge amount information I gained on helping to understand the young person we were caring for was really useful.

“By putting some of the things we had learnt into practice, understanding the learning need more and looking at things from the young person’s perspective things began to improve. We got to know the young person better and we were able to see the positive and negative behaviours more clearly. We spent a lot of time talking about issues as they came up and about feelings and tried to make them understand certain situations.  Over time we saw social skills develop which was lovely to see.”

Michelle and James daughter also had to adjust to becoming part of a family who foster. Explaining how she adapted to having other young people at home, Michelle said: “In the first couple of months when things were really hard with our first placement we made sure we spent one to one time with our daughter and as we learnt more about the young person and their behaviour and we shared it with her and this helped her to understand what was happening and why.

“My daughter has now settled into us being a fostering family and she is happy for us to continue fostering. We feel it is important for children to be younger than her and this seems to work best. Our daughter has been attending the local Kids Who Foster support group which enables her to meet with our children from fostering families and gives her a chance to let off steam and get support.”

Although relatively new to fostering the couple have already seen the rewards of taking on this role. They talked passionately about watching a child grow and develop, showing improved confidence and relationships and doing well at school. They reference the importance of the ‘little things’, the small steps children make to become happier and more settled and knowing that they have helped to make that difference.

The couple have found the training and support on offer to be invaluable to them in terms of ongoing advice and contact from Warwickshire Fostering Service, and training courses. They see training as giving them a vital opportunity to meet other carers and hear their experiences.  Michelle said: “I go to the regular support meetings and both new and very experienced carers attend these and the things I have learnt from hearing about other carers experiences is immeasurable.”

James offered some of his own advice to anyone else considering fostering. He said: “It’s important to think a lot about the effect fostering will have on you, your lifestyle and your family. You need to be fully committed to becoming a foster carer as it takes a lot of time and is hard work.  If after thinking good and hard about becoming foster carer you think you could do it then embrace it. The first year of fostering will be a challenge and a learning curve, but you will gain skills and understanding on the way. It has been one of the best things I have done in my life.”

Michelle added: “Fostering is a really rewarding experience. We didn’t realise you could foster and work; but you can, you need to be around before and after school and school holidays, but fostering can fit alongside a working family. Don’t worry about feeling like you don’t know a lot to start with you will be given information as part of initial training, but don’t feel overwhelmed, you will learn about the process as you go along.”

Parent and Child – Claire and Nick

Claire and Nick live in the Nuneaton area and have a son aged five and look after a teenager in a permanent placement who has been with them for 7 years. Nick has been a foster carer for 17 years and Claire and Nick have been fostering together for eight years. They have been parent and child foster carers for the past two years and prior to this have done short term and respite fostering. In this time they have offered homes to over 20 children and had three parent and child placements.

Nick is a very experienced carer having looked after around 50 children in addition to those he has cared for with Claire. He became a foster carer because his mum and dad fostered while he was growing up and he enjoyed being part of a fostering household. He was able to see the benefits that fostering can bring both for the carers and for the children.

When Claire met Nick she wanted to join him in being a fostering family as she wanted to be able to help change the lives of troubled children. Claire was raised by a single mother and was able to stay in her care but she was aware at that time other children from single parent families may experience more problems and may have to be fostered. Claire said that when she began fostering it was an eye opening experience and she was able to see first-hand some of the issues faced by looked after children and their families.

Alongside their permanent placement Claire and Nick have specialised in providing Parent and Child places. The placements are easier when the parent (usually a mum) comes straight to their home from hospital so they can help to support the formation of a strong emotional bond. They help the mums to learn about care for their baby, establishing routines with the baby and caring for them in a warm and safe way. Claire remembers what it was like to be a new mum and so can empathise with the new mums in her care. She see it that no one really teaches you or prepares you about how to care for your baby and when you bring your baby home from hospital it is a learning curve and is happy to support this process.

Claire said that when mum’s come to stay with them with their baby she feels like they have something in common; the mum wants to keep her baby and Claire and Nick wants to help them to learn the skills so they can. Claire and Nick describe their role as teaching parenting skills, overseeing the mums in their parenting role and supervising and advising the parent. After 8-12 weeks a parenting assessment would start, carried out by Children’s Services to see whether the mum is able to put these new skills into action. The outcome of this assessment and the progress the mother has made during the placement inform whether a mother gets to keep her child long term.

Claire and Nick explained that in both of their longer term placements the mothers had problems in relation to their relationships with their baby’s father and this was the biggest challenge. There were concerns about domestic violence in the relationships between the parents and their role was to make the mother see that the baby was their priority and had to be protected. Claire said: “The mothers that stayed with us were able to be away from their own area so this helped them to have some distance and start a fresh.  We would talk to the mums about the impact of violence on them and their child and get advice from other agencies on how to help and support the mums through the transition of ending a violent relationship.”

Claire and Nick feel they have overcome challenges by communicating well with the mother in their care and other agencies involved so they can help and support the mother to make the right decisions for the sake of her baby.

Claire and Nick felt that if a mum was found not to be able to care for her child safely long term following a placement then this would be very sad and would be a big challenge for them as carers.

Claire and Nick feel very proud and happy that the parent and child placements they had for a longer term period were able to care for their babies well and were able to take their babies to live with them independently.

Claire says she would help new mums to realise the realities of caring for a baby and would support the mums to go to the local mother and baby groups and would encourage them to take courses at the local children’s centre.  Claire said she hoped that when the mums moved to homes of their own with their babies that they would get involved with their local groups and centres.

Claire and Nick think that Parent and Child carers need to be committed, understanding, patient, empathetic, happy to be challenged, able to work in partnership with the new mum and be able to give and take. Nick said: “It is important to be able to step back when a mum is doing well and be able to intervene when things aren’t going well or you feel that the baby may be at risk.”

In giving advice for anyone starting out as a Parent and Child carer, Nick said: “Try to build a positive working relationship with the parent you are supporting and this can be more difficult if the parent has a learning disability.

“Try to be prepared for both the best and worst case scenarios – we have been lucky and the mums we have cared for have kept their babies but it can be very sad for parents who are unable to gain the skills to keep their children long term.

“Always try to communicate well with your fostering social worker and other professionals involved and make good use of the support they can provide.

“Have clear guidelines and boundaries in place when a parent moves in so everyone knows where they stand.”

A young person’s perspective – Emma’s story

Emma is 16 and lives in supported accommodation. She has been in foster care since she was 18 months old apart for a couple of spells where she returned to her parents for a few months.

 

Emma has been a member of Warwickshire’s Children in Care Council for the past 6 months acting as a spokesperson for young people in care in the county and making sure their views are heard by key decision makers.

 

Talking about her experiences in care Emma explained: “I have been in foster care for most of my life. I have had 50 different foster placements in that time and this has included placements with both Warwickshire and independent agency foster carers.  My last placement was in residential school and this was the most successful for me.

 

“Due to my experiences when I lived at home with my parents I often struggled in foster care and never settled well with any foster carers. Problems started because of what had happened to me in the past and I started to rebel but then I felt like I was pushed out by my foster carers because they couldn’t deal with my difficult behaviour.

 

“I moved between carers so much that I felt that I was unwanted so I never really tried to settle in placements as I knew they would not last. This became a bit of a cycle for me and I was angry with the world because I had no stability so foster carers kept struggling to manage my behaviour and I would have to move again.

 

“I just wanted someone who would stick with me and understand that I was just having a hard time and needed them to support me but I realise that I never made this easy for my carers. My last placement was in a residential school and this made a lot of difference to me. The staff at the school put in place boundaries for me and these helped me to improve my behaviour over time. The school allowed me to broaden my horizons, learn new things and develop my talents; I like to sing.  I was also able to improve my grades at school which was good for me.

 

“Being a foster carer is a difficult job and requires a lot of effort from carers and also the young people they look after. In my case this arrangement didn’t work but the system did eventually offer me something to meet my needs. Foster carers need to be patient, loving, caring, understanding, fair, but strict if they need to be and non-judgemental of young people’s pasts or behaviour which like mine can be very challenging.

“I would tell anyone thinking of becoming a foster carer that they need to realise that young people will have had a hard time and may be angry at the world and can have difficult behaviour because of this. There will be good times too and fostering can be really rewarding as you are helping young people who have had a hard time. Just because there may be bad times this doesn’t mean that the young person doesn’t want to be cared for by you, they just need help or are maybe having a bad day.

“Foster carers need to be able to accept and welcome a young person into their family. Young people like me need people who are willing to help them through hard times. I hope talking about my feelings of being in care will help people to think about this role and help them to understand what is required.”

For more information about the Children in Care Council go to www.warwickshire.gov.uk/cicc

Permanent foster care – Gary and Kyle

Gary lives in North Warwickshire, is a single carer and has no children. He has been fostering for over 20 years and currently looks after 15 year-old Kyle who has been living with Gary as a permanent part of his household for four and a half years.

Gary has cared for 28 young people since he became an approved foster carer. His placements tend to be male children aged nine and over which works well as he is a single male carer. In addition to Kyle he has taken two other permanent placements – a sibling group which he looked after for eight years.

Talking about how he became a foster carer and what the role means to him, Gary said: “I was a primary school teacher when I first applied, I wanted to help children as I saw there was a need for foster carers through my work. I started off with respite care and then did some short term care and now I do a combination of permanent care and short term alongside this. Along the way it became clear that working and fostering was not going to work for me as single carer as I usually care for young people who are teenagers.

The most rewarding part of being a foster carer is seeing young people settle and be happy in my home and become more confident.  Seeing the young people I have cared for go off and live independently and be successful is wonderful. For the young people I have cared for permanently seeing them grow from children into adults and being with them on that journey is very fulfilling.  I enjoy keeping in touch with young people and being there for them if they need me even as adults and its nice for me to know they are ok.

I have also found working with young people’s families rewarding especially when they have been appreciative of the care I have given.  As a foster carer you need to understand that the young persons’ family is always going to be a key part of their lives and you have to be able to try and work with them in a positive way. If parents do support and value the placement you are providing then it can really help the young person and give the placement stability.

Gary also talked about the challenges he has faced as a carer. He explained: “When I started fostering I had little experience of teenagers and initially found this to be quite a challenge. I was also surprised at some of the difficult behaviour of primary school children, given I was experienced in working with this age group in schools. Working with children’s families can also be hard but it helps if you try to imagine how you might feel in their situation. I found that these issues are easier to overcome with permanent placements as the decision has been made that young people will be remaining in care and your role as a carer is more clearly defined.

“Challenges have been overcome by having good support from children’s social workers and my fostering social workers. The support of my fostering social worker has been really useful for me as a single carer as it gives me the opportunity to discuss things with someone else and they can offer me advice and other points of view. I have found the training provided by Warwickshire to be excellent and this has helped me to overcome some of the challenges. I have done a lot of training over the 20 years I have been approved, there are always new courses being introduced on current issues for foster carers and they are a good way of meeting up with other foster carers and hearing about their experiences. I find talking with friends and family helps to overcome challenges too.

“Finally I would say my previous life experience has helped as this meant I had more confidence in working with children and this helped me to deal with the challenges as they came up.”

Describing the attributes of a good carer, Gary said: “Foster carers need to be able to understand a child’s needs and background as it may be very different from anything they have dealt with before.

“They need to be caring, flexible, fond of children, and able to question themselves and their values. Also important are tolerance, patience, an ability to forgive and forget and an open mind.  It’s also important that carers have a good sense of humour and are willing to involve a young person with their everyday life and commit to them.

“I would advise anyone with these attributes to try fostering as it is a wonderful opportunity to provide a young person with new experiences and give them the stability to grow and develop.  When a young person has been through a tough time and you can work with them and support them to return to their family, this can be a wonderful thing to share with the young person.

“Anyone thinking about fostering also needs to realise that it is not easy, you need to be prepared for the challenges and you need to understand it will be emotional at times. You will need to resilient to get through difficult times.”