Our president, Libby Thornhill, and vice president, Darren Harman-Page, represent The Fostering Network at our high profile events, membership conferences and stakeholder meetings, with the aim of raising the profile of fostering and ensuring young people in care have a positive experience of family life and the best possible start to adulthood.
Meet our president
Libby Thornhill has been fostering since 2011 having been inspired by some of the amazing children and staff at the school where she was Chair of Governors for 15 years.
After two of their birth children left home, Libby and her husband Michael took the decision to foster. They cared for their last young person for eight years and still very much keep in touch with him, spending holidays, family gatherings and extended family celebrations together. Libby is now a support carer for people who foster teenagers.
Libby was involved in The Fostering Network’s Head, Heart, Hands programme and is a keen advocate of social pedagogy and a holistic approach to care. Having worked with staff and members of The Fostering Network she was keen to become more involved with the charity and so applied for the role of president.
Prior to becoming a foster carer Libby worked for more than 30 years at a senior management level within local government and the NHS.
In between fostering and her pastimes of reading and walking, Libby also supports fostering by sitting on two Local Authority Fostering Panels as Vice-Chair, three Agency Fostering Panels and one Charity Panel.
Meet our vice president
Darren Harman-Page started fostering in 1994 while still working as a baker and confectioner. He has fostered children and young people from babies to adults, through many types of fostering arrangement including short term, long term, bridging to adoption, children with special educational needs and disabilities and children with complex medical needs.He currently cares for a sibling group and provides respite for another child as well as a Shared Lives placement.
Darren fosters with his wife, three birth children and four adopted children, having extended their bungalow and bought the adjacent property in order to have enough room to continue to cater for their growing numbers while still fostering.
Darren has previously served as a trustee for The Fostering Network and is a current member of the England advisory committee. He also fundraises for us and completed a trek up Ben Nevis in 2014 and a Foster Walk in 2015.
In addition to his responsibilities as vice president, Darren also chairs the Essex foster carers association having taken up the role in 2013 after he had been a trustee for several years.
