It feels like one big family.
Jenn:
I work in a busy mental health crisis team, I’m quite often involved in safeguarding meetings, speaking to social workers and seeing the need for foster care. I’m quite often involved in safeguarding meetings, speaking to social workers and seeing the need for foster care.
Respite care has been invaluable; it’s been a real eye-opener. We’re very open-minded and respite care has helped build our expectations and skill sets.
It’s lovely to see their confidence building up. If our ten-year-old does something like rip a piece of paper in a way that might look like a dinosaur at the right angle – he’s like ‘wow, look at that!’ and he’s proud of himself.
It’s our job to reaffirm him and gradually build up his confidence in subtle ways.
Hayley:
I worked in a secondary school, we taught children in care, who spoke to me if they needed help. Seeing them flourish was lovely.
But, also, I could see that some children didn’t have ideal care settings. Looked after children need positive role models.
It feels like one big family. There’s always someone to talk to and ask, ‘I’m not really sure about this, what would you do?