Over 100 children and young people come into care, everyday, in the UK. When these children and young people are unable to stay with their birth families, foster carers are there, ready to provide a safe, supportive and stable environment for them.
78% of these children will have experienced abuse, neglect or serious family dysfunction. However, not all foster care arrangements are permanent as the aim is always to return children
to their birth families: when it is safe to do so.
Foster care gives birth parents the space they need to make positive changes in their home and lifestyle whilst keeping their children safe. Foster families provide these children with a positive sense of family life, whilst these changes are taking place.
There are so many great foster carers doing great work for these children, as well as benefiting from the experience themselves. Hackney Foster Carer, Janet said: “I feel like I have purpose again, and to be honest I think it has brought the family together. When everyone left home I would just go to work and come home to an empty house. Now I feel like I have it all back with my foster children, my adult children and grandchildren because we do a lot together.”
Are you a potential foster carer?
A good foster carer is understanding, empathetic, resilient and patient.They care about children and are committed to providing them with the help they need.
If you have these basic qualities, then you might be who our children are looking for in their time of need. Foster carers are ordinary people like you, doing extraordinary things.
It doesn’t matter if you are single, cohabiting, married or in a civil partnership, if you care about the wellbeing of children, and have a spare bedroom in your home, we would like to hear from you.
As part of our commitment to achieving positive outcomes for young people, Hackney has recently introduced its own Supported Lodgings scheme. This service is a step down from fostering and aims to support care leavers’ transition to independent living.
If you would like more information about fostering or supported lodgings in Hackney then call 020 8356 4028 or email fostering.recruitment@hackney.gov.uk and supportedlodgings@hackney.gov.uk respectively.
https://hackney.gov.uk/fostering
