Change a life by fostering: Foster Care Fortnight in May

Between 11 and 24 May, Diagrama Fostering is supporting The Fostering Network’s Foster Care Fortnight campaign to raise awareness of the impact of foster care and the urgent need for more people to foster the children living in care.

Across the country there is a critical shortage of foster carers, and not-for-profit Diagrama Fostering agency is encouraging people living in Kent and Surrey to step forward and consider starting their fostering journey.

This year’s Foster Care Fortnight campaign theme ‘This is Fostering’ will shine a light on the everyday realities of fostering while raising awareness of the profound impact foster carers have on children’s lives.

Kate Patel, Head of Fostering for Diagrama Foundation, the charity which runs Diagrama Fostering, said:

Foster Care Fortnight is an important opportunity to recognise the life-changing difference foster carers make every single day. At Diagrama Fostering, we see first-hand the dedication, resilience and compassion our carers bring to children and young people, often during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

This year’s theme, ‘This is Fostering’, perfectly captures the reality of fostering. It’s about providing stability, building trust, and creating a safe, nurturing environment where children can begin to thrive again.

Foster carers desperately needed

Sadly, there is an unprecedented number of children across the country needing foster care, and a shortage of foster carers to place them with.

Becoming a foster carer gives you the opportunity to help a child or children to be the best they can be, see them flourish and give them opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Thousands of new foster families are needed every year to care for children, with the greatest need being for foster carers for older children, sibling groups, disabled children and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Just like parents, foster carers can be any gender or religion, married, single, retired, working full or part time, own their home or live in rented accommodation, and you don’t have to have children of your own. Foster carers don’t have to commit to long-term fostering, as carers are needed to provide short-term care and short breaks too.

Choosing the right agency

With so many fostering agencies across the country, choosing the agency that is right for you and your family is important. Diagrama Foundation, a not-for-profit fostering agency based in Kent, is proud to put all its surplus funds back into the children it cares for and provide its carers with full support throughout their fostering journey.

Is fostering right for you? An experienced fosterer shares her thoughts

Margaret Gardiner is Diagrama’s Fostering and Adoption Team Manager and has fostered for over 20 years. Here she answers questions that might help you to decide if fostering is right for you.

What first inspired you to become a foster carer?

From when we first met when I was 15, my husband and I spoke about fostering or adopting, so it was always part of our life plan. We had three birth children, but we knew we had room in our hearts for more children. When we became aware of young people who were struggling as young adults due to their adverse childhood experiences, we knew we wanted to help them.

What skills or qualities do you think are most important for someone considering fostering?

Fostering isn’t about having a perfect life or a special background. It’s about offering love, patience, and a stable home. It really is helpful if you are organised, a good communicator, able to work with a wide range of people, armed with a good sense of humour, able to accept help and support and willing to learn.

How long have you been fostering?

We started fostering in 2003 and at that time focused on fostering boys who were 12 and over. We could take three at a time and they were mainly long term, so they lived with us until they were 18 and ready to move to independence.

We also did parent and child fostering, which is something that many people don’t know about. This type of fostering provides a helping hand to vulnerable parents to develop and learn the key skills needed to raise their child. A parent and child foster placement is provided for mothers and/or fathers who are unable to look after their child or children by themselves. The parent or parents and their child or children move in with their appointed parent and child foster carer to gain the practical skills and support needed to help them develop their childcare skills.

While we were doing this, we shared our home with four single mums with their babies and one couple with their four-month-old baby.

You’ve fostered both teenage boys and parent and child placements. What were the unique challenges and rewards of each?

Where do I start? With the teenage boys, it was managing the complexity of very different personalities and needs at the same time. It was getting a balance between supporting them as teenagers, as well as young people who had had traumatic experiences. Often this meant that they could regress or have missed vital developmental milestones, and it was recognising what was normal teenage development and behaviour and what was trauma based. At the same time, they had their own families so didn’t want a ‘mum or dad’ but wanted to be part of the family as well as wanting to be treated as a young adult. This took a lot of reflection on our part to ensure we were meeting the right need each time.

Teenagers also bring a lot of challenges with school, technology and testing boundaries, including alcohol and/or drug use. They are also not known for deep conversations and engagement, so it was finding ways to connect with them. When I look at those who have lived with us, none of them achieved much at school, despite being intelligent young people. However, many of them have been very successful as adults. Seeing them now as adults with families of their own is the greatest reward.

Parent and child placements are unique in that you have a parent (often an adult) living with you in your home, along with their child. The main challenge of this is to understand what ‘good enough’ parenting is and not impose your own standards on them. Being successful is about working with the parent, while keeping focused on the child without physically caring for the child, unless previously agreed or in an emergency. It is very difficult hearing a baby cry and not responding straightaway but allowing a parent to make their own mistakes, all the time supporting that parent to care for their child.

The rewards in parent and child parenting are seeing the right decision being made about the child’s future, whether that is going home with the parent or being placed with a relative or being moved to an adoption placement. All these options can be good outcomes for the baby.

How do you help young people, especially teenagers, feel safe, valued, and able to build trust?

By being honest and direct with them. Young people need to know what the boundaries are but be able to make mistakes and learn from them. We always tried to reject any negative behaviour but not the person. I would buy their favourite chocolate bar or other treat when I went out, to show that I was aware of what they liked and that I was thinking about them when they weren’t there.

We never said we would do something if we couldn’t deliver on it. But we would explain why. We would also apologise if we got something wrong, to model what we expected.

What makes you passionate about helping people to foster?

I believe that children do well in families particularly when they are well matched with carers who are child focused. We always need foster carers from different backgrounds, with different ages and ethnicities, as this means we have a wide range of carers to match with the children. It is a really rewarding experience and enables children from challenging backgrounds to have the same opportunities that other children their age have.

How do you support and guide new carers when they begin their fostering journey?

All our foster carers have a dedicated supervising social worker, who gets to know them and their wider family. This enables the carer to be well supported. We have an induction handbook that expands on the training that they will have completed and spells out clear expectations for the carers, as well as what they can expect from the agency. This ensures that carers have a good insight and understanding of what is required of them.

There is an out of hours support system for emergencies, where carers can talk to a social worker from Diagrama that can advise and support them, and we also organise monthly support meetings where carers can meet with other foster carers and share their experiences and ask for advice or tips.

Why do you feel it’s important to foster through a not-for-profit agency, and what difference does that make for children, families, and carers?

For me, it is important that I both foster and work in a not-for-profit agency as this enables everyone to be child focused, rather than focused on profit making. It enables us to concentrate on the needs of every child and their carers and have the flexibility to offer bespoke help for each situation.

What do you think sets Diagrama apart as a fostering agency?

Diagrama is an agency that has strong person-centred values and this is not just with the children and families that we work with but with staff. From the Chief Executive through to the managers, admin and social workers. We are a totally focused agency, which allows us to know each family and situation individually, meaning whoever foster carers talk to in the team, they don’t have to keep explaining their personal situation.

Looking back, how has fostering changed you personally?

Fostering has given me a much larger family! It has made me very thankful for the life I have, as I know that there is often a very fine line between the families that I have worked with and how my life has been.

It has been humbling to know that the simple things like sitting round the dining table with family have been highly valued by many of the young people who lived with us. That how we treat people has had a long-lasting impact on them and our lives have been so enriched by many of the people who have passed through our home.