Welcome to Foster Care Fortnight^TM 2019 – the UK’s biggest annual fostering awareness campaign, developed and delivered by The Fostering Network.

I was recently asked by a woman’s magazine to write a short article about some of the most harrowing situations I had faced. It’s reproduced below. It was only when I’d written the article and reread it that I realized my most harrowing situations all related to fostering. 

Having been adopted myself and then going on to work in foster care, I know how important good relationships are for looked after children and young people. I am passionate that young people should be supported to stay connected to those they care about when they move on, and have always tried to apply this in my work.

In this blog Susan Soar from our Fostering Potential programme looks at some of the research evidence around the benefits of adults and children reading together and explores three popular children’s books.

Joe is one of the many teenagers who turned their life around entirely after coming into foster care. He came a long way from not having a dream to now wanting to take on Sir Ben Ainslie, one of his biggest role models. Here Joe talks about his career plans as a sailor and why he sees foster carers as game changing for young people’s futures.

For four years Kerry* has fostered babies and toddlers with her husband. Here she explains why she supports our Keep Connected campaign and feels passionately that transitions within and out of the care system must focus on children’s needs and protect their relationships with their foster carers.

BUT - it’s a short word with so much power. It can change the tone of a sentence, a conversation, a meeting. It can suck the wind from your sails. And I’m fed up with hearing it in relation to fostering. 

Dorcas came into foster care when she was 14. Three years later, aged 17, she has received an offer from Oxford University to study law. She tells us how she decided to take her future into her own hands, and what it needed to defy the statistics about care leavers.

The role played by foster carers has never been more important. Three-quarters of children in care are in foster care, and with a rising number of children entering the care system, improving the experience of care and raising the outcomes of looked after children must start by ensuring foster care is the very best it can be.
 
With such importance placed on the role of foster carers, The Fostering Network carries out a survey of foster carers every two years. Over the past few years the report based on this survey – our State of the Nation’s Foster Care report – has become recognised as the most comprehensive insight into foster carers’ views of fostering in the UK.