Mark is a support worker for adults. He and his partner Kieran, a hairdresser, began fostering Will when he was 14-years-old. They live together in London. I saw an advertisement about fostering in our local newspaper and chatted the idea over with Kieran. We decided to give each other space to think about it. The initial reason [...]
Coram Voice provide tips for talking to children about past experiences and why they are in care, after many told survey they had not had a full explanation. In 1920, my grandmother went to live with her foster carers in rural Sweden. Her mum was a young single mother at a time when society did [...]
Map of care provision needs urgent review as 'anxiety and frustration' grow over lack of capacity, especially in children's homes, inspectorate's social care lead warns. National leadership and investment is needed to tackle the lack of capacity and workforce skills in services for children in care, Ofsted has warned in its annual report. The inspectorate said [...]
The figures presented below are taken from statistical reports gathered and published by government departments and bodies. Details of sources are provided at the foot of this page. LOOKED AFTER CHILDREN On 31st March 2019: 78,150 children were in the care of local authorities, up 4% on 31 March 2018the rate of looked after children per [...]
Abid and Shabnam live in Birmingham and have been foster carers for over 10 years. Our two sons had grown up. They’d both gone to London, to university, to study. And here we were in this family house, just the two of us. Then Shabnam read an article in the paper saying that there was a [...]
Andi lives in a small market town and has been a foster carer for over 20 years. I think things happen for a reason, I don’t believe in coincidences. And so I was in the local library one day, and this bookmark fell out of a book. It was advertising a new scheme called Teencare, [...]
I was six when I first went into foster care, and I thought it would be like Annie, with Miss Hannigan! I had never been to school that much, except for Fridays when a social worker would come along to make sure we were going, but even then me and my sister tried to get out [...]
Brain scans of Romanian orphans adopted in UK show early neglect left its mark Children who experience severe deprivation early in life have smaller brains in adulthood, researchers have found. The findings are based on scans of young adults who were adopted as children into UK families from Romania’s orphanages that rose under the regime of the dictator Nicolae [...]
Throughout their early lives, young people in care are told they are on their own. It's unhealthy and we need to change the record, argues John Radoux. Do you think you are self-sufficient? Do you think you have reached independence? If you are reading this article, you definitely have not – unless you designed and [...]
Each year, the team at Freedom Fostering puts on a special celebration for each and every foster carer and their families. This year, we celebrated at Featherstone & Hilton Community Centre and put on a lovely spread of Jamaican themed food, as well as DJ and bouncy castle. Maureen & the team donned their best [...]
