Foster Care Stories
Mary’s story
Discover inspiring journeys of foster carers and the children they support, alongside valuable resources to inform and inspire. Whether you’re considering fostering or already part of the community, join us as we celebrate the impact of fostering on transforming lives.
Mary has been a foster carer with Team Fostering for 14 years. For Foster Care Fortnight she chatted to us about the importance of the relationship between her, a young person and their birth family.
For Mary, building and maintaining these relationships has been essential in enabling a young person to keep in touch with people who mean a lot to them and helping them feel settled and comfortable.
Mary explains:
“When you first meet a young person – from a child’s point of view, they’re thinking who are these people? They’re nothing to me and all of a sudden I’m expected to move in with them.
“So I do think it is important to slowly build that relationship. Because it’s scary. You can’t imagine what it must be like for them.
“You have to give it time to learn and get to know the child and how they are. Because, obviously, it’s difficult to begin with. Every child’s different.”
The relationship between foster carer and birth family
Keeping links with people from home is also important, enabling young people to maintain their sense of identity.
Mary says: “I’ve had a young person who had a really important role model who’s always been the one consistent thing in their life. It’s massively important to enable them to keep in touch with people like that because it keeps them grounded.”
Enabling a child to spend time with their birth family is something most foster carers have to factor in and the specifics of this differ from child to child. For Mary’s most recent young person this has been more regular so a good relationship has been even more important.
She said: “It’s just been so nice. We all get on really well.
“It’s important for them to see us interacting with each other, because we do laugh together. It’s just so much nicer and easier for the young person.”
A relationship beyond foster care
Although the young person will soon be leaving Mary, the relationship they’ve built up means they’ll all continue to stay in touch.
Mary said: “He’s going to be going home which is like a dagger to my heart. But I’m very happy and over the moon for him.
“When he moves out, it’s not going to be the end of our relationship. It’s still going to continue for forever.”
Could you build a relationship with a child like Mary? Or perhaps you’d just like to ask some initial questions? Give us a call on 0800 292 2003 or complete our online enquiry form below.