What is fostering a child like? Our foster carer, Helen, shares her experience.

Fostering children and young people is a challenging role and for those contemplating the decision, the question of ‘what is fostering like?’ is a really important question to ask but a difficult one to truly answer without experience. That’s why we believe it is extremely important to meet and chat to existing foster carers as part of your research.

We also understand that it isn’t always easy to find the time to attend face to face meet ups and since the pandemic, often no need to! If you don’t know any foster carers, the task of researching can be really overwhelming, especially when you discover that there are hundreds of fostering agencies and suddenly you have a whole host of new questions, like ‘which fostering agency do I choose?’, ‘which is the best fostering agency?’, ‘do I go with the local council or an agency?’

In order to try and help prospective new foster carers with some of these questions, we sat down with one of our foster carers, Helen, to find out how she feels about her role with Community Foster Care.

We asked Helen:

• Why did you want to foster?

• What is the best thing about fostering?

• What is the most difficult or challenging part of fostering?

• How has fostering affected your family and particularly, what impact has it had on your birth children?

• What would you say to someone thinking about becoming a foster carer?

• Why did you choose Community Foster Care?

Have a watch of the video to find out more and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch or take a look at our fostering information pack!