First time foster carers experience (Fostering)

Member Name: snootybutnice

Product:	Fostering
Date:	24/01/09 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Spend time with kids, change a life, feel good about yourself, get paid for doing it.

Disadvantages: Can impact your family, especially the children + you'll need to deal with challenging behaviours

It's funny but it's always something that I wanted to do - fostering that is - and when we couldn't have any more children (we have a 5 year old daughter) I decided the time was now to foster.

We decided to work with a private agency. Before you wonder "yes"...we can choose an age range/sex that we prefer to foster and you have a supervising social worker to help you make that decision i.e. what kind of child will best fit in with your family.

We decided to go for teenage girls (not boys because of the possibility of sexual abuse with our 5 year old - and not young girls because we didn't want our daughter to be competing with attention from someone of a similar age and needs).

We chose to go the private agency route for fostering rather than through social services. Social services pay less and support less. Private agencies pay more and support more but you are far more likely to have more 'troublesome' placements i.e. the placements that social services can't place because of their age, behaviour...or simply because the carers on their books are already fully booked up.

Our first child was 14. We wanted a non-drug taking, non-self harming and non violent child because we had a 5 year old daughter in the house (who of course we are very protective of). Now...the issue sometimes with social services is that they won't give all the info about the child to the agency because they want to get a placement. We were offered the placement and after a few questions to the agency accepted this child (You do have a choice). She was wonderful and had so much potential...on the up side. On the down side, she did drugs, smoked, had underage sex, tried to get pregnant a few times, self harmed, tried to commit suicide, was depressed, stole, didn't attend school much of the time and for one month was only with us for 25 days - the rest of the time she was in and out, absconding.

We're still in contact with her even though she has now left us and we are waiting for our next child placement (which we hope will have fewer issues). We've turned one placement down because she had just tried to hang herself and self mutilates - and we don't want our own daughter traumatised.

Incidentally, our daughter didn't know much about what was going on during our first placement as the child was a bit of a loner and didn't really want to spend time with a 5 year old. But our daughter loved having her about and cried when she left - but cheered up when we said we're waiting for the next one!

Despite an initial "in at the deep end" first placement, we really love our experience. I would recommend it if you really love children and want to help them - but don't expect them to change overnight - it's little baby steps only. We take for granted our own upbringing (which gives us the building blocks for the future) - some of these children have never had these first blocks to build on - so its starting from the basics and making small steps towards a brighter future for them.

Summary: Loved it, loved it. Waiting for our next foster child!! :-)