Feeling like they had the space and time and having some insight from their jobs, John and Denise felt they could make a difference and wanted to help people. The couple both continue to work – John as Managing Director of a pub company and Denise as a Community Support Officer for the police. Denise retired from her main career in 2020 but found herself missing being busy. She wanted to continue part-time working in a role with experience relevant to fostering and, as a PCSO, she finds herself in frequent contact with social workers, the council and young people.

During their research into becoming foster carers, John and Denise liked Community Foster Care for its not-for-profit status. John says, “I’m not into profiting out of children, so that really appealed to us, the charitable status.”

At first, their motivation was to provide emergency and short-term fostering placements and they had no preference as to whether these would be solo children or sibling groups. “If we can give them a happy week or a happy two weeks -” said, John, they would be pleased with that. It was Community Foster Care’s Registered Manager, Emma, who gave them the confidence to consider sibling groups more specifically. John says, “We could keep sibling groups together, keep brothers and sisters together and seeing them being split up everywhere was the main reason.”

Denise adds, “There was no reason not to do it - there was such a demand for [homes for] siblings because not everyone is able to take siblings, so we thought, you know what? We will be those people because we can do it, there’s no reason why not.”

“I don’t think we’ve had any challenges other than the practicalities – you’re running around more, there are more things to do and a bit of juggling getting them places – it’s just normal life, really.”

In May 2018, Denise and John went to foster panel and were approved, with their first sibling group coming to them later that summer.

“We had a sibling group of two that spent half their time fighting – so that caused a bit of a pain – When they felt under real pressure, they came together and would lean on each other but the rest of the time they [would fight] – We had to physically intervene quite often, so that brings its own challenges. The behavioural issues that they have can manifest itself as arguments between each other.”

Almost a year to the day of their approval, their current placement of three sisters came into their lives.

John notes, “When they first came to us, the oldest one, who was seven at the time, was the maternal person in the family – I suppose the biggest challenge was to stop her taking care of her siblings.”

Denise reflects, “One of the positives is that they’re more confident – these three girls that we’ve got – have grown up to be more confident as a result of being kept together.”

“It’s just beautiful watching them change and grow up and their relationships with each other – they’re all independent characters now, and all got the confidence to take the mickey out of each other and to banter back” says John.

“When I tease them, because I tease them all – the little one, she’ll be like, ‘John-John! John-John don’t!’ – she’s very protective of her older siblings but in a fun way, in a really lovely way.”

“A - The middle one, she wouldn’t say boo to a goose, if anyone said anything to her, she would cry. She didn’t really speak and couldn’t speak properly and now she is a cheeky little eight-year-old, that answers back, has banter – as the youngest one said, ‘I don’t know when she breathes – does A ever shut up?!’”

“We had parents evening last week and as we walked around each class, each individual teacher couldn’t have been any more glowing about each of them – what delights they were, how wonderful they were, how polite they were, how friendly they were, how confident they were – A’s teacher talked about how resilient she was and we were like ‘Wow!’ – she was anything but resilient at first and that’s so rewarding” said John.

Initially, John had given up work and was acting as primary carer however, with their situation changing, John says, “We play a very conventional role of foster parents, of a mother and father - we split those responsibilities, we don’t have a gender specific ‘Oh, that’s mum’s role or that’s dad’s role’.”

Considering their experience of fostering siblings so far, John shares, “It’s been brilliant. It’s like any fostering, you have ups and downs, but in the main, the sibling groups are brilliant and the other thing that’s a bit of a plus – like any sibling group, whether in foster care or not – they keep each other entertained.”

Denise adds, “They don’t get as bored - They’re like a little team – as much as they can argue and fight, they will stand up for each other.”

Considering her favourite thing about fostering, Denise says, “It’s just the normal, routine stuff – when they’re having tea or their breakfast and you go off to another room but you can still hear them – or in their rooms when they’re just chit-chatting or bickering and it’s just funny - it’s so nice because if you’re on your own – and I was an only child – you don’t have that.”

John adds, “Most of the fun happens round the dinner table – they will argue like siblings should. It’s really good to watch, really lovely to watch.”

John says of contact with family, “We’re massive supporters of it. With the parents, we organise [contact] ourselves - so that the parents have quality time with the children – it just brings that stability.

Children have got to learn to be well balanced, to see different points of view and they’ll make their own decisions with information at their disposal when they get older. When they’ve got the confidence to do that, and they feel stable in their environment – and being together does help produce that stability – my hope is that it breaks the cycle.

Most of the parents are a product of their upbringings and we’ve got a chance to break that cycle” John reflects.

Speaking of the oldest child, John says, “R will tell you, ‘We’re very lucky, we’ve got John and Denise and we’ve got Mum and Dad who love us as well’ – it’s best of both worlds as far as she’s concerned. And we promote that, that mummy and daddy love you.”

On talking about their parenting style, John says, “I believe in expressing your emotions – in a controlled way – I believe in talking about them – I believe in normality but the normality is that we talk things through and we explain why we feel the way we do and we show we’re happy.” John believes this approach helps cultivate the girls’ emotional intelligence and encourages curiosity and compassion within them.

Speaking of his own childhood, John says, “You can have not great experiences and you can try and learn from them and do things differently and that’s always been my mantra; we learn from everything and we don’t repeat mistakes.”

When thinking about the ‘formal’ side of fostering, the meetings, the social worker visits, John says, “We don’t want [the girls] asked all these formalised questions to make them ‘special’, to make them ‘different’ every time – they’ll become institutionalised if we’re not careful – Whilst giving them all the support they need – we need to normalise these children’s lives – we’re very keen that they’re down to minimum statutory visits and that these visits are as informal as possible.”

“Every social worker that comes, they’ll see these three wonderful young ladies and there’s a presumption, they’ll say things like ‘You’re so lucky to have these three’ and we think we’re lucky to have them but it’s through bloody hard work - Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of where they were at and remind other people, where they were at.

These children have been through traumas that you can only possibly dream of and just because they present themselves as beautiful, well-balanced children – and hopefully they are – but those traumas are within them somewhere and we’ve got to make people aware and that’s a constant challenge.

That’s really positive to say it’s a challenge because most looked-after children – nobody has to remind them that they’re looked after, nobody has to remind them that they’ve had these traumas because it’ll present itself in behaviours and lots of other stuff.”

When asked what they personally take from fostering, John says, “The more you put in, the more you get out – I won’t get into the nature vs nurture debate but I do believe there’s a lot to do with the nurture and we can really help make a difference and make a difference to their life going forward – if I didn’t believe that, I probably wouldn’t do it.

What I said at first, when we were doing short term, ‘All I’d love is for an 18-year-old kid to turn up on our door and say ‘thank you’, even if it was one week of their life that we’d had them.’ I thought, that’d make it all worthwhile for me and that’s what it’s about, you’ve got to believe you can make a difference. Your actions do make a difference, but you’ve got to think about every action you do, every interaction you have with those children.”

On the positives of fostering sibling groups, Denise says, “It’s just a nice achievement – to give siblings the opportunity to grow up together, it’s quite rewarding.”

John adds, “The support they give each other really grounds them and it makes it a lot easier for the sibling than if they are on their own. No matter how loving you are as a foster parent it’s gonna be harder without the support of the other two – if anything it’s easier – they amuse themselves, if you have singles, they tend to be very demanding of your time.”

As to their reasons for choosing to foster with Community Foster Care, John says, “It’s the community, it’s the support – it’s part of being a larger family and it’s a not for profit and we’re all trying to make a difference.”