Support for foster carers

Fostering is a rewarding but often challenging job.

The rewards are seeing a young person or a sibling group of children blossom and thrive in your care, gaining weight (appropriately!) learning social skills, making friends at school and joining in with activities and family life. Caring for unaccompanied children from abroad and seeing them learn the English language, achieve at school, settle and feel safe in this country can also be hugely rewarding. Similarly when supporting a young mother and baby and seeing them bond, the mother learning to parent and baby thriving in her care, makes for a very fulfilling piece of work for a foster carer.

As with any rewarding career, there are challenges. Children who missed out on good, safe care and stability early in their lives can present challenges later. They can often express their distress in ways that are hard to cope with as a foster carer : they can be very angry young people, they may be unable to bond and make attachments with adults because they have never experienced a secure relationship with an adult in the past. Breaking that pattern of poor attachment can take many months, sometimes years of nurturing care, understanding and determination on the part of the foster carer. Not surprisingly foster carers cannot do this alone. Support is crucial for them to achieve what they need to with the damaged young people they look after.

Most fostering agencies provide good support by linking each foster carer with a qualified, experienced social worker who can assist with strategies to manage behaviour and offer emotional support to carers who may be going through a difficult time with a child. When times are particularly trying, and a child's behaviour continues to cause concern, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) can be approached for specialist support. This can take many forms including individual play therapy for a young child or counselling for a teenager or joint "family" therapy for the foster carers together with the child. On occasions, CAMHS might offer therapy for the foster carers themselves, to assist them in managing the emotions engendered in them by the child's behaviour. Some agencies also offer private consultation with a psychologist or specialist social worker with knowledge of attachment disorders and treatment plans that can be introduced to help a child learn to trust. Foster carers are "coached" under the guidance of the psychologist to manage behaviour differently and encourage a young person to be able to make a more healthy attachment with the foster carer.

Sometimes attachment problems as a baby can lead to irreversible impairment to the functioning of a child's brain and the sort of treatments described above can only go so far. Therefore, foster carers sometimes need to be able to recognise the limits of treatment and accept that the emotional problems presented by the child will not be fully resolved. IN cases such as these, they need support from professionals to find ways of managing these behaviours and difficulties within their families.

Whatever the situation, professional support is crucial for a successful fostering career.