My husband and I became registered Foster Carers with Sunbeam Fostering Agency 6 years ago.

I am Level 3 qualified childcare provider and my husband is a retail manager. Both of us are very caring and very much family orientated people and the decision of providing children from disturbed and disadvantaged environments with a loving and caring home came very natural to us. 

In autumn of 2010, we rang Sunbeam and inquired about fostering. In the next half a year we were assessed, attended the Skills to Foster Course and in 2011, we been approved to foster by Sunbeam’s fostering panel.

Since then we provided foster care for children of different ages and we have learnt a lot from each of them.

All of the children have had different needs and required lots of love, care and attention. It’s not easy all the time, there are times when you go through things  you only read about but there is nothing you can’t get through with a right support from your fostering network.

We have been provided with excellent support from our Supervising Social Workers over the years and attended many interesting and helpful trainings organized by Sunbeam. This has made us, understand better how to deal with different situations and learn how to manage challenging behaviours presented by children.

In addition, Sunbeam provides us with regular support groups and organizes fantastic Fun Days packed with lots of activities and annual days out to the seaside for children and their foster families. I cannot praise enough everyone at Sunbeam for their hard work and for working very closely together with foster carers to be able to improve children’s and young people lives.

There is no better feeling in the world than seeing the child or young person becoming worry free, confident and happy again. When children are happy and comfortable with you they will respect you and want to be part of your family. Children will settle quickly and will want to succeed in their life. Our role is to show them the right directions and to guide them.

Fostering is a great thing to do and I would love to see more people become brave enough to try it.

You do not need to be wealthy, have a huge house or be university graduate. Children who come into foster care don’t care about those things. They need you to be there for them, be patient, be understanding and most of all to truly care about them and make them feel like they are your own.

Our decision of going into fostering in 2010 was one of the best decisions we have made in our life. We are very proud of what we are doing and if at the end, there will be only one child who got a chance to live a normal and happy life because of what we did for her or him it is all worth it.

If you are interested in making a difference to a child’s life, please contact our recruitment team on 0208 7990930. We look forward to hearing from you.