Fostering FAQs Answered by our Foster Carer, Maggie

Our foster carer, Maggie, shares her thoughts on some of the most significant fostering FAQs

Our brilliant foster carer, Maggie, has been doing long term foster care alongside short term fostering and respite foster care with Community Foster Care for the last 16 years! So, it’s safe to say, she knows a thing or two about what fostering is like and is very well placed to give her honest thoughts on some of the big fostering FAQs.

We sat down with Maggie (who is also a Foster Carer Rep, the legend) to talk about all of her fostering experiences - the good, the bad and the ugly.

We know that when people are thinking about fostering, they think for a long term and they want to gather as much fostering information and first hand accounts as possible to help inform their ultimate decision. We hope this video can help anyone who is looking at fostering in Gloucestershire, North Wiltshire, Lancashire or Cumbria (the areas we operate) but also, for anyone who is looking into fostering.

Video transcript:

Sometimes, the things that have happened to them... I mean, you'd never expect to see a young child that you're looking after hit the floor and start barking but I've had a young child that came to me because he'd been so neglected, he decided to live with the dogs and the dogs were his warmth at night and he was eating out of bins and dog food and although he was, obviously, taken away from that scenario and put with a loving family - I was his respite carer - but when he got frightened, when he got into his survival mode and something really frightened him, he would go back to those days and his safe place was with dogs and that, I think's, probably been my biggest shock - to see a child hit the floor and start barking in fear.

What’s your name, how long have you been fostering and how many children have you looked after?

My name's, Maggie, and I've been fostering for 16 years now. Ooh! Four long-term, I've run out of numbers for the respite that I've done and the medium term but there's been four, main, long-term young people that I've looked after.

They've come to me from backgrounds of neglect, they've come through backgrounds of physical abuse, they've come from backgrounds of being starved -it's so hard to name what that trauma would actually be. But it's very abusive backgrounds and it can range, as I said, from just neglect to physical, mental, emotional abuse.

How does trauma show up, day to day, for foster children?

It can look like a myriad of things, y'know, your young person might be really upset about something or they may have been triggered by something and you're watching a reaction and you're guessing that that reaction is about a particular subject but actually it could be something entirely different. Because we associate trauma with - especially post traumatic stress disorder - with horrendous things that happen at war or with horrendous accidents that happen to adults but we forget that the young people that come into our care are suffering from PTSD as well and it can have all kinds of impacts on that child.

A lot of people think, 'Oh, foster child, terrible background, just a naughty kid', but if they understand that they're not a naughty kid, that there's reasons and I've had - I've experienced that, where a young person in a classroom, y'know, somebody comes in late, they slam the door, kids do - but that foster child is immediately taken back. They're not in that classroom anymore, they're not in that safe place anymore, they're back in their bedroom where that banging door means that somebody's coming to get them and that fear and that survival mode -and then, of course, they're being told they're not concentrating - well of course they're not concentrating! They're not doing it deliberately. How they're reacting isn't to what's going on at that minute, it's what's going on in their minds.

How do you identify a child’s triggers?

Well, you're always given information before that young person comes to you. So, you've got a good, basic idea of what they've been through. So, you would know, for instance, if they've unfortunately suffered any kind of physical or sexual abuse, you would know that loud, banging bedroom doors or anything that happens out of the ordinary would be a trigger for them. And, I suppose that's something you get with experience as well.

So, it really depends on the child's background, what they've suffered - you can just attune yourself to that and begin to understand what triggers them - and, of course, you get the experience in your own home. Sometimes, something completely out of the blue can happen - a child could perceive that you're doing too much housework, which seems totally innocuous to you, but that child has been told that their parent didn't look after them very well and that the house was dirty and they feel offended by that. And there they see you cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and they're thinking they have to defend their parents or people that were bringing them up before. And it can put them into a situation where they have to defend what they've had before...

It can show itself in a lot of different ways but experience helps a lot and the information that you get from Social Workers before that young person comes to you is vital.

I had one child, who came to me straight from the courts where his parents had been told they could no longer take care of him and he'd been told for years and years and years that Social Worker's and everybody outside the house were bad people and frightening people and that people wanted to take him away from his parents. So, he had a mindset that everybody was scary, anybody in authority was scary. So, going to school, for him, was really, really difficult and it took us a long time to understand why he was behaving the way he behaved.

People thought, maybe, that because he was putting his hoodie on, that it was just rebellion. It wasn't, that was his safe place. Y'know, when he first came to me, he was frightened, he was confused, he didn't know what was going to happen to him, he didn't know why his parents had been taken away. So, his safe place, to keep him in 'survival mode', if you like, was to put a hoodie on, to put his earphones in because if he didn't hear it or see it and nobody saw him, maybe those bad things wouldn't happen anymore. So, when he was trying to do that at school, of course he was breaking all the rules and he was being, in his mind, punished for it.

So, what we did in the end, we came to a compromise where a trusted teacher or a teaching assistant would understand what was going on, would, quietly, take him away from the main classroom into a private area, where he could put his earphones in, where he could put his hoodie on and feel safe and know that he was being listened to.

That happened lots and lots in that particular school and in the end, the young person began to realise that he was being looked after, he was safe and gradually and gradually and gradually, the need for the hoodie became less.

What have you found to be the hardest part of fostering?

I think it's beginning to realise that what you want to give to a foster child - the love, the guidance, the support - you want to give it at a certain speed because you want to put everything right straight away and that's not always possible, depending on what the young person has been through. They're not in a place yet where they're ready to accept all of that and, sometimes, it's like speaking to them in a foreign language - they've never had, maybe, love or guidance, they've never had consistent food, they've never had somebody who's there all the time, irrelevant of how they're behaving, and they don't understand that.

So, it's hard because you want to give all those things to that young person to help them grow, in all the ways that you'd want a young person to grow, and they're not always ready to accept it. So, you have to step back and let them take that at the pace that they're ready to and that can be hard.

What’s the best thing about fostering?

Well, the best thing would be the complete opposite to what I've just said, obviously, you begin to see that young child relaxing, you begin to see them taking on board the support that you're giving them, you begin to see them blossoming and becoming the young adult that you would want them to be. The best that they can be, for themselves. And when you see that, that seems to suddenly turn.

It's just that that consistency is always there for them and they know that you're always going to be therefor them, irrelevant of what they do, irrelevant of how many times they shout at you or tell you that they don't want you in their life but you're still there and you're still there and you're still there and all of a sudden you you're gonna be there and they can relax then to become themselves - that's really good.

Why did you want to foster?

Why did I want to foster? I was working as a careers advisor - too many years ago to admit to! But we had an office down in Westgate street in Gloucester. And I began to notice that a lot of young people were coming into our office and they were tired, hungry. We were letting them use our meeting rooms to sleep in, we were getting them food from Jane's Pantry next door and I began to look into it, really, then, that's when I first saw it. And I just felt that I wanted to do something about it and I started to look at the idea of fostering then.

How did you find the fostering assessment process?

I knew it had to be invasive but, obviously, you have to give a lot of personal details and although you understand and you're quite happy for that to happen, it can be - it can feel like a long time and it can feel that it's really delving into your private life but when you sit back and think about it, you realise that, yes, this has to be done because what you're gonna be doing is looking after very traumatised young people and they have to make sure that you're the right kind of person to do that and to make sure that there isn't anything in your background that's gonna stop you being the best that you can as a foster carer.

Did you have any preconceptions about fostering?

I can remember when I first started my assessment - so my training to become a foster carer. I had this lovely little golden picture in my mind that I really wanted to help young children and I wanted to be there for them, and I wanted to help and guide them to become the adult that they wanted to be and I had a picture in my mind of how I was going to do that and I can remember some of the training I got then really stuck with me, even to this day.

We had yellow sticky labels and we were each asked, in our training, to write down the one thing that was part of being a family and part of being a healthy human being. So people wrote down love, siblings, food - y'know all the things that you'd expect in every day life and the trainer was really clever, she'd collected all our yellow stickers and she'd put them on the wall in the shape of a child's head and maybe shoulders and then she asked us, "Now, what do you think it would be like for that child if they didn't have love?" So she'd take the 'love' sticker - and she'd put them in a very specific order. So she took away love, she took away siblings, she took away, y'know, clothing, security, she took away all those stickers that we'd written and what you were left with was, basically, half a child - all the negative things. And she said, "If the love and the security and all the things you'd normally expect a young child to have in their family life - if it's not there, you're not going to put that all in overnight. So when that young person is brought to you, you can't put your arms around them, you can't say 'You're here now, everything's going to be fine' because it's not there and it's like speaking a foreign language to them, they just don't understand."

So you have to know how to build that up gradually, at their pace and that stuck with me for 17 years. I think it's the base of everything I do.

What’s it like being a single foster parent?

I was very skeptical at first, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do it. So when I first joined CFC, I was a respite carer, only, because I didn't want to put a child in a situation where they came to me to live and then I found that I couldn't do it. So, I was working part-time and became a respite carer and found that I really just loved doing it and that I could trust the support that was being offered to me via CFC.

So, eventually, the young boy that I was doing respite with - I became his full-time carer and it just seemed to be a seamless thing from respite to full-time care.

What is fostering teenagers like?

The boys that I've had with me have always started, sort of, fairly young - so they were pre-teenagers when they came to me. I think the first child I had was nine going on ten, so they were still in Primary school. And then, because of matching, because obviously when the young person's with you and it's working out successfully and you want to take on another child or you want to do respite, alongside that long-termer, the Social Worker's are very careful about matching. So, it would usually be another boy, a similar age.

And then I had another long-termer, alongside the first young boy. So, it's kind of grown from there and, of course, as the year's have gone by, they've got older and older, so the matching has always been at their age group. So, it's turned out in the last five, six, seven years that it's been teenage boys, although, I've done respite for all age groups and both boys and girls.

I think, for the teenagers, they need to know that they're being listened to, that they're being valued. And, although they wouldn't maybe admit it, they do like the guidelines, the boundaries and the fact that they know you're gonna be there, irrespective of what horrors they might have done, as a teenager, but that you're always gonna be there and they begin to respect that and they begin to know that they are safe and that they are being listened to. And, I think, if you can provide that, you're onto a good thing and so are they!

Why did you choose to foster with Community Foster Care?

When I first started to look, I didn't even realise that you could foster through an agency, I thought it all had to be done, direct, through Social Services. And I spoke to Social Services and then I found out you could do it through agencies as well, spoke to different agencies and then I found out that there was charities. And I just liked the idea of a charitable organisation helping young people and supporting their foster carers.

So, I approached CFC, had an interview with a Social Worker, had several chats with them, found out as much as I could. But I liked the idea of - that they're a non-profit organisation and they really do what they say on the label. They really do care, they really do support foster carers, which is very important particularly as a single carer, you need to know that that support is there for you, if you want it. Thankfully, I haven't needed it too often but when I have needed the backup - 24 hours a day, they're there for you.

What do you like most about fostering with Community Foster Care?

Well, it's the family feel and it's been very difficult through the Covid period because everybody's had to be at distance, everybody's had to do training and support and supervision through Zoom and that has been really awkward and it's had an effect, maybe, on the young people that we're looking after. But all through that, CFC did everything they could, Zoom-wise and activities they put on for children through Zoom and the support that was always there at the end of a telephone call if we needed it.

So it's, kind of, the family feeling that we want to get back to because it was always there before and we're getting back to that family feeling now. I like to know the other carers and the other carers say the same to me, they like to know the other carers in our charity and they like the personal contact between all of the carers, the respite that can be offered, the support, the training - the whole package!

Do you stay in touch with your young people?

Gosh, yes! There's one young boy, one of the first long-timers that I had - he's coming up to 25 now! He's got a loving partner, child of his own, good work. He's very settled, he has issues every now and then, like we all do - they're a young couple and they have financial problems but he's just passed his driving test. So we've helped him with a car, which is amazing.

But to watch him now, growing from  just a young teenager into a young man and into a responsible adult with a loving family - he's a wonderful dad and, yeah, that's really good to see but when he comes back with them, he also comes back with quite a lot of washing for my washing machine. So there's always the fun side of it but, yeah, I keep in contact with most of them, actually.

What would you say to people who think foster carers shouldn’t be ‘paid’?

Well, yeah, that is a big question really and I can understand why somebody who doesn't know about fostering might say that but, y'know, if you wanna provide a good, safe home for a young, traumatised person you have to do that with some financial backing, y'know, you can't do that on your own. So, there has to be some 'pay' in order for you to look after that young person and you're doing a very difficult job [24/7]. So, I think that you should be paid for the work that you do.

Most of the pay we get is for the children, anyway, and your expenses and their needs. But it's something that most people couldn't do without that financial backup. So, if we want the children to be well looked after and safeguarded and guided to becoming responsible young adults, they need to be shown how to do that from a household that works in a way that we would like them to become in the future.

What has shocked you most about fostering?

I suppose the amount of caseloads on Social Workers, particularly the Social Workers who work direct for Social Services, as opposed to agencies, although I know the agencies have their heavy caseloads. So, I think the amount of need was the most shocking thing for me. And the amount of hours that Social Workers have to put in just to cope with the demand.

What would you say to people thinking about fostering?

Make your enquiries because all the way along, it's your choice, whether you continue to do it or not but make the enquiries, find out. Talk to Social Services, talk to different agencies, talk to as many people as you can about it. If you know foster carers, talk to them about it.

But find out, get the information, speak to Social Workers, have an interview but remember, that all the way along the process, it's always your choice whether you carry on or not, so find out!