In the world of fostering both foster cares and looked after children face challenges.

Firstly, managing challenging behaviour. Foster children are often complex individuals with complex needs and backgrounds. Quite often this is due to what they’ve been through. Foster children may seem antisocial or self-destructive behaviour such as violence, tantrums, self-harm or running away from home. Foster carers need to deal with this in a gentle way with patience. Full training will be given on tips to help you approach different situations, and foster carers will always have a supporting social worker to help when needed.

Secondly, interacting with biological families. Often the primary aim of a foster placement is to reunite parent and children when it is safe and beneficial to do so. This means contact with biological families is vital but often it is not always easy as some biological families are more resistant to the fact that they need help from a foster carer while they work through their issues. Anger might be aimed at the foster carer with parents refusing to see the foster carer as someone who wants to help. There is always help for the foster carer with their supervising social workers who can help the foster carer by giving them background information and making sure the foster carer doesn’t have to do anything they are not comfortable with. It is very important for the foster carer to remain positive and work as team during this process as it will help the looked after child in the long run.

Thirdly, foster carers can experience exhaustion in their own life especially when they look after more than one child. Often carers put so much effort into the foster child that they forget about their own life. This can lead to foster carers feeling very unhappy and unmotivated. This is where the foster carers supervising social workers helps by finding a solution and talking about any difficulties the foster carer is facing. For example, if the foster carer is exhausted their supervising social worker can help the foster carer get some time to themselves by organising a backup carer to look after the looked after child for a couple of days.

Being a foster carer you never need to face things alone as there are many people around you to help and support you.

For more information, please contact our recruitment team on 02087 990 930 or visit our live chat option on our website.