Well done and very best of luck to you. It’s a very noble thing to do.



Mrs Merman and I were very keen to foster. So as soon as her own four kids had flown the nest, we embarked on the procedure to become foster parents. It was something we both dearly wanted to do (she’s long been a SEN teacher in some of the roughest Gloucester schools and has a lot of experience with children in care).

We jumped through all necessary the hoops, training, background checks, assessments and interviews, but as soon as we got close to the end and were ascribed our Social Worker (who, it turns out, was a liar) we began to feel they were trying to put out off and were hoping we would pull-out. Which we regrettably and obligingly did.

I still can’t help but feel – when I see a news article about abusive parents who feed their children by sliding toast under a locked bedroom door – that we could have done a good job.

Posted 2 weeks ago

18 days in and all seems to be going well – he’s (let’s call him ‘R’) now openly talking to us, asking questions, helping out at meal times. I’ve taken him out for a day with one of our girls and some of her friends to a local event (Knaresborough Bed Race) and he enjoyed it, played with the other kids and had a great time. Last weekend was our girls’ 13th birthday party so they had about 16 friends around for a garden party / water balloon fights, fancy dress etc etc and he lapped it all up and was acting like a typical ‘annoying little brother’ – all great to see.

But… his social worker is bloody dreadful – he’s still not done a home visit and has cancelled four times and counting. R is meant to be having a contact visit with his mum tomorrow so the SW was going to come tonight to tell him (R doesn’t even know yet) and he’s just cancelled again. So instead he says he will come to our house first thing, tell R then immediately drive him away for a contact in a location 1 hour away (despite his mum living about 15 minutes from our house).

This is the frustrating side of fostering we were warned about and it’s come true straight away!

Posted 5 days ago

Meetings being cancelled and changed at relatively short notice is definitely something you get used to. Also the sheer maddening number of them, with a social worker for us, the child’s social worker, an independent reviewing social worker and a court appointed guardian we seem to have a meeting at least once a fortnight. That’s before the additional school contact with educational review meetings once a term.

Good to hear R is settling in well with the family though.

Posted 5 days ago

Yeah we aren’t bothered for ourselves, it’s how it is making R feel – we tell him the SW is coming, he gets anxious, it gets cancelled, he calms down, it gets re-arranged, he gets anxious… We’ve stopped telling him now.

But surely the SW should have at least done a home visit by now just to check that the poor kid is in a safe environment… Ahh well, as long as R is relatively happy then that’s all we can do.

Posted 5 days ago

Ask SW what the deadlines are for statutory visits – MrsMC is further down the chain as an adoption SW but she’s been banging out 300 mile round trips to hit her stat visits for a recent placement.

Though ongoing staff shortages are stretching all of children’s services to the limit, sadly.

Yesterday she successfully completed the adoption of a child who was the sixth in the family yo be adopted. Apparently #7 is due in 5 months…..

Posted 5 days ago