When I was young my mother dropped me off at my grandma’s house and left me there. It was the best thing that could have happened to me, my life before was turbulent, then when I went to live with my grandma she put me on the right path. I know firsthand how transformative foster care can be. When my own situation became official with social services I used to go for ‘respite’ with another family. They were amazing people, and I look back on those memories as happy days. I’ve always known I wanted to do the same for children in similar situations to what I had been.
Mine and Helen’s values have always been aligned when it came to fostering. She was a TA and learning mentor in a school, so she had first-hand experience of working both with foster children and young people with troubled home lives. We both felt compelled to do more.
After our own four children had grown up, it was time for us to open our home and foster. We joined Excel Fostering in 2020 when we were introduced to the triplets, and they’ve been part of our family ever since.
The triplets came to live with us, then their older brother followed not long after, so we have four children from the same family. To us, keeping their family together is so important. It’s busy! But it’s essential. You must put yourself in their shoes. These children have been taken out of the only family home they’ve ever known and essentially moved in with strangers.
When you take on a sibling group, they’re in it together, they adjust easier into the life you’re then able to give them – they’re making those new memories together. If they’d been split up, they wouldn’t have had that.
For Helen and me, we wanted to keep their childhood as normal as possible and that meant a life with their siblings.
The benefits of fostering siblings far outweigh the negatives, but of course there are challenges. They bicker as all siblings will. Because they were so isolated before, making friends for them was tricky as they didn’t understand social cues. And the triplets very much moved as a unit.
It was difficult in the early days to break down those barriers and the importance of privacy was hard to get across.
However, communication is a real strength in our household. We took a lot of time to recognise them as individuals and have one to one conversation. We’d have a dedicated space to talk, or we’d use the opportunity doing an activity to discuss how something made them feel.
With fostering there are no easy fixes, these things take time and all it took was patience and open communication to help them open up. We’re so proud of all of them. Now they all have their own interests. The oldest brother has turned into a sensitive and very emotionally mature young man, I’ve had many ‘father-son’ chats with him, and he knows he can talk to us about anything. If he’s embarrassed about a topic he’ll text first, he’s figured out his own ways of communicating that he’s comfortable with. Even his school have noticed the difference in him.
Seeing them be individual, have their own interests and their own friends – it’s quite a feeling to see how far they’ve come.
It goes without saying that when we’ve essentially blended our family with another family unit, it changed the family dynamics. However, our children were older, and they’ve been a huge help.
We would go as far as to say that being part of a fostering family, our own children have become better people as a result. It opened their eyes to what was really going on in the world. It’s made them kinder and more empathetic, our youngest is also now doing social work at university. The effects of fostering can be quite profound.
Part of why we wanted to tell our story to the world is not just to entice more people to fostering, but to highlight the importance of keeping siblings together. Often, if we go to a fostering event, we’re the only ones with a sibling group. It would be amazing to see more people fostering siblings. Yes, they’ll have squabbles but what you’re doing for them can’t be matched. They’re happier, more relaxed. They still get to grow up together. Isn’t that what we’d all want if we had the choice?
Start the conversation today. Our team of friendly advisors are on hand to answer any foster care questions you may have. We can offer you honest and practical advice that can help you decide if becoming a foster carer is the right path for you.
