Will fostering affect your children?
If you’re thinking of fostering, have you considered the affect of fostering on your children?
Introducing a looked after child into the family
It’s asking a great deal for a child or young person to share his/her parents and home with a stranger when their parents decide to foster. Yet birth children of foster carers often hold the key to the continuity of a fostering placement. That's why the decidision to become a foster carer needs to involve the whole family. Why not ask Fostering People to put you in touch with some of our foster carers with birth children to hear their own experiences?
We also know that some children really get the fostering bug... so much so, now they're adults, they've become foster carers too!
Listening to children who foster
We believe that it’s vital to give children who foster an opportunity to voice their thoughts, concerns and feelings.
Here at Fostering People, we work with you to ensure that the voices of your birth or adopted children are listened to. We’ll encourage them to put their views forward in your carer review and we never discriminate against your birth children – that's why we've included them in the Children and Young People's section of the website.
And when we have activities and events for looked after children we'll always invite your own children. Because we know how important they are in making fostering a success for you. We also know that a lot of children who foster become great carers as adults.
Speak out loud
Fostering People, in partnership with the Children Workforce Development Council (CWDC) have developed a tool kit that all fostering agencies can use to ensure that children's voices are heard. The toolkit, called Speak out loud, was developed with carers' own birth children as well as our foster children, and ensures that new carers, during their assessment, think about the impact of fostering on their birth children and/or adopted children.
