Considering fostering

libbyc3

I'm a foster carer and I think given your OH's mental health problems have 'been resolved for years' this will actually go in your favour.
social worker aren't looking for carers who have had lovely lives with no problems - otherwise how would they relate to the kids? but rather people who have had issues and resolved them and maintained that will be good role models - the kids who come to you can be prone to mental health problems themselves given what they have been through and you two sound as though you are in an ideal situation to help them.
good luck

Gingham_Ribbon

I'd be amazed if your studies and the way your wife has overcome her own problems didn't demonstrate to some degree your ability to understand and deal with the sorts of problems foster children might come to you with.

Nothing lost by trying, but I would like to hope that you're exactly the kind of couple (caring, determined, hard working) that they're looking for.

hethmar

Yes, no good sitting and wondering about it Contact them informally for a chat. Good luck.

puddy

Hi I assess foster carers for a living for 3 local authorities and one private agency.

I would want to discuss the following with you as a prelimary:

availability - who is going to be the main carer, school run, contact, med apppointments, social services appointments, after school or hobby clubs, shopping cleaning, cooking, day to day 'stuff'

support networks - who do you have around you, who would your 'back up carers' be, do they understand about children in the care system

experience of working with or caring for children

knowledge about child development, attachment, functioning, behaviours, discipline methods, safety

but most importantly your understanding of both your own histories, how they have created the people you are today, what it means for you as people, what it means for you as potential parents/carers

this last bit involves lots of nosey, intensive questions, lots of challenges to your perception of your self and your lives.

my main thing when assessing is how open are the applicants to review and analyse themselves. how much have they worked on previous issues and problems. how much can they see their own behaviour in the eyes of others.

theres no doubt that your wifes disabilities will need to be thoroughly discussed and assessed as to what this would mean for her caring abilities and her abilities to meet the needs of a child
theres also no doubt that a lot of your evidence would come from knowledge you have built up both in your studies and in your lives (living with disabilities, working with disabilities, living with mental health issues etc etc)

however, a word of warning. something i am always alive to when assessing is that often people arrive at 'fostering' because they cant think of what else to do for a living. im not saying that this is the case here but you said yourself that you came to it as a process of elimination of other work opportunities. theres nothing wrong in that per se, but you need to have lots of evidence as to why you would be suitable for the role. one of the areas an assessor has to address on the assessment is 'why is now the right time for the applicant to foster - why has the applicant decided to foster'

and quite often i struggle to really get this answer from people if it is not something they are really passionate about

RacyRed

puddy wrote: »

Hi I assess foster carers for a living for 3 local authorities and one private agency.

I would want to discuss the following with you as a prelimary:

availability - who is going to be the main carer, school run, contact, med apppointments, social services appointments, after school or hobby clubs, shopping cleaning, cooking, day to day 'stuff'

support networks - who do you have around you, who would your 'back up carers' be, do they understand about children in the care system

experience of working with or caring for children

knowledge about child development, attachment, functioning, behaviours, discipline methods, safety

but most importantly your understanding of both your own histories, how they have created the people you are today, what it means for you as people, what it means for you as potential parents/carers

this last bit involves lots of nosey, intensive questions, lots of challenges to your perception of your self and your lives.

my main thing when assessing is how open are the applicants to review and analyse themselves. how much have they worked on previous issues and problems. how much can they see their own behaviour in the eyes of others.

theres no doubt that your wifes disabilities will need to be thoroughly discussed and assessed as to what this would mean for her caring abilities and her abilities to meet the needs of a child
theres also no doubt that a lot of your evidence would come from knowledge you have built up both in your studies and in your lives (living with disabilities, working with disabilities, living with mental health issues etc etc)

however, a word of warning. something i am always alive to when assessing is that often people arrive at 'fostering' because they cant think of what else to do for a living. im not saying that this is the case here but you said yourself that you came to it as a process of elimination of other work opportunities. theres nothing wrong in that per se, but you need to have lots of evidence as to why you would be suitable for the role. one of the areas an assessor has to address on the assessment is 'why is now the right time for the applicant to foster - why has the applicant decided to foster'

and quite often i struggle to really get this answer from people if it is not something they are really passionate about

Ouch! No wonder there is a shortage of foster carers.

I've no problem at all with lots of care being taken to ensure the children will be safe, but I am not sure I understand the need to challenge self and life perceptions. That really does sound much too intrusive.

Just what does that, often emotionally painful, process gain that is of real benefit to a fostered child?

puddy

because if you dont know yourself and your triggers and how your choices, language, behaviour, parenting style creates and moulds behaviour in a child, how can you meet the needs of children who have had extremely dysfunctional and neglectful experiences

we all have attachment styles, normally bourne out of our own histories, if you dont know yours then you wont be alive to the effects it will have on your own parenting and therefore your relationship with others and the child you are caring for

we give very subtle, insidious messages with our behaviour, we need to ensure we know what messages we give children in the care system, the amount of times i see children experiencing similar messages to the ones they have been removed from but the carer cant see it because they dont have enough insight.

often people go into this process and dont get to the end because they are unable to review their lives to the extent that they wouldnt understand their own interactions with a child. they also perform badly at the task of fostering because they have underestimated their own issues, hidden them from the assessor and suddenly all hell breaks loose. people also dont often understand the intensity of the task and then break down when they are asked to perform the task to the level we expect.

people genuinely go into this with their eyes shut a lot of the time

however, you're right, there is a huge shortage of foster carers and there is no simple answer, do we keep the process the same (which keeps getting more and more stringent by the year) or do we loosen up on things. the assessor is also under a lot of scrutiny when they take cases to be approved, what you as an assessor think you have explored to the nth degree, the panel still want to know more about the subject or issue and you're sitting there thinking 'well its been done to death in the assessment!'

meritaten

puddy wrote: »

Hi I assess foster carers for a living for 3 local authorities and one private agency.

I would want to discuss the following with you as a prelimary:

availability - who is going to be the main carer, school run, contact, med apppointments, social services appointments, after school or hobby clubs, shopping cleaning, cooking, day to day 'stuff'

support networks - who do you have around you, who would your 'back up carers' be, do they understand about children in the care system

experience of working with or caring for children

knowledge about child development, attachment, functioning, behaviours, discipline methods, safety

but most importantly your understanding of both your own histories, how they have created the people you are today, what it means for you as people, what it means for you as potential parents/carers

this last bit involves lots of nosey, intensive questions, lots of challenges to your perception of your self and your lives.

my main thing when assessing is how open are the applicants to review and analyse themselves. how much have they worked on previous issues and problems. how much can they see their own behaviour in the eyes of others.

theres no doubt that your wifes disabilities will need to be thoroughly discussed and assessed as to what this would mean for her caring abilities and her abilities to meet the needs of a child
theres also no doubt that a lot of your evidence would come from knowledge you have built up both in your studies and in your lives (living with disabilities, working with disabilities, living with mental health issues etc etc)

however, a word of warning. something i am always alive to when assessing is that often people arrive at 'fostering' because they cant think of what else to do for a living. im not saying that this is the case here but you said yourself that you came to it as a process of elimination of other work opportunities. theres nothing wrong in that per se, but you need to have lots of evidence as to why you would be suitable for the role. one of the areas an assessor has to address on the assessment is 'why is now the right time for the applicant to foster - why has the applicant decided to foster'

and quite often i struggle to really get this answer from people if it is not something they are really passionate about

yes I read it as a process of elimination of other work opportunities too - but with a POSITIVE spin on this! after much thought and discarding of other options this couple came to the conclusion that fostering was ideal for them! the OP also said that he was preparing to study for a masters in another area and tbh that could take him down another route entirely, but he and his partner both think they could make a real difference to a child possibly with special needs!
and...........not one mention of the money!
I read the post and thought 'Wow, these people sound terrific for fostering special needs children'! I have also read all the replies and still think so.

I am not in any way critisising your post puddy, you raise a fair point, as I am sure you are aware that people DO apply to become foster parents for wrong reasons, but I would be more suspicious of people who had prepared a glib, altruistic sounding answer to your question - than someone who seemed a bit floored by being asked it! to the genuinely caring person it never occurs to them that someone may be suspicious of their reasons.

RacyRed

puddy wrote: »

because if you dont know yourself and your triggers and how your choices, language, behaviour, parenting style creates and moulds behaviour in a child, how can you meet the needs of children who have had extremely dysfunctional and neglectful experiences

we all have attachment styles, normally bourne out of our own histories, if you dont know yours then you wont be alive to the effects it will have on your own parenting and therefore your relationship with others and the child you are caring for

we give very subtle, insidious messages with our behaviour, we need to ensure we know what messages we give children in the care system, the amount of times i see children experiencing similar messages to the ones they have been removed from but the carer cant see it because they dont have enough insight.

often people go into this process and dont get to the end because they are unable to review their lives to the extent that they wouldnt understand their own interactions with a child. they also perform badly at the task of fostering because they have underestimated their own issues, hidden them from the assessor and suddenly all hell breaks loose. people also dont often understand the intensity of the task and then break down when they are asked to perform the task to the level we expect.

people genuinely go into this with their eyes shut a lot of the time

however, you're right, there is a huge shortage of foster carers and there is no simple answer, do we keep the process the same (which keeps getting more and more stringent by the year) or do we loosen up on things. the assessor is also under a lot of scrutiny when they take cases to be approved, what you as an assessor think you have explored to the nth degree, the panel still want to know more about the subject or issue and you're sitting there thinking 'well its been done to death in the assessment!'

I understand what you are saying, and in an ideal world would completely agree.

But.... there are children out there in need, there are many of us less than perfect adults who would love to help give a child a chance.

Personally, I'm fairly sure I have a pretty indepth understanding of myself, warts and all. I've been slowly learning about fostering, especially emergency fostering, wondering if I had what it takes, as I'd really love to do it. But there is no way on earth I could manage to submit myself to the sort of intensive examination you describe. I went through it once before for a different purpose, once in a lifetime is more than enough.

DianneB

Good luck with your application. My OH and I fostered years ago (have a lovely daughter we adopted after fostering her). The absolutely worst thing about fostering wasn't the kids (who were mainly lovely) or surprisingly the kids parents, but the social workers who offered no support and were very flexible with the truth. Gave up fostering because of the SW's!!

puddy

meritaten wrote: »

yes I read it as a process of elimination of other work opportunities too - but with a POSITIVE spin on this! after much thought and discarding of other options this couple came to the conclusion that fostering was ideal for them! the OP also said that he was preparing to study for a masters in another area and tbh that could take him down another route entirely, but he and his partner both think they could make a real difference to a child possibly with special needs!
and...........not one mention of the money!
I read the post and thought 'Wow, these people sound terrific for fostering special needs children'! I have also read all the replies and still think so.

I am not in any way critisising your post puddy, you raise a fair point, as I am sure you are aware that people DO apply to become foster parents for wrong reasons, but I would be more suspicious of people who had prepared a glib, altruistic sounding answer to your question - than someone who seemed a bit floored by being asked it! to the genuinely caring person it never occurs to them that someone may be suspicious of their reasons.

yes, i agree, i just raise it as a point that will be explored (or should be)

glib, altruism never fools me anyway.....