Blue Sky Fostering releases heart-warming fostering case study

May 24, 2013 - PRLog -- One of the best things about fostering children is the idea that, with your love and care, you are shaping the person they will be for the rest of their lives and providing them with a happy and secure environment they will never forget.

With this in mind, Blue Sky Fostering, an independent fostering agency looking after children in the south of England, has released a case study written by one of their foster carers.

In it, the carers - a couple – talk about how they hope they can break the cycle of poor parenting and help prevent it continuing in the next generation.

Our experience of fostering by Nicholas and Shelley.

Why spend time looking after someone else’s children?  Shelley and I do it because we want to make a difference.  We hope our efforts will stop young people underachieving, turning to petty crime, and ending up descending into poverty.  

Statistics show a clear relationship between poor parenting and the ability of young people to then go on to parent their own children.  For the young people we look after, we try to help them break this cycle of intergenerational decline.

We have been fostering for more than seventeen years.  We've looked after more than thirty young people.  The shortest placement lasted twenty minutes, the longest more than ten years.  In between, placements have generally lasted between two weeks and four months.  The twenty minutes’ placement is another story, but the young man who is our ten year plus placement, is, as is his older brother, still a loved member of our family years after he left the care system.

Amongst the young people we’ve fostered, we’ve looked after teenagers with cultural heritages originating in Africa, the Caribbean and Ireland.  Without exception, we have never found a young person who didn’t fit in with our family.

If you are contemplating becoming a foster carer, think carefully about what you are willing to give.  While you can never replace a birth mother or father, you will need to provide a loving and supportive environment – a full time commitment if ever there was one.

If you have the resolve to do this – sometimes under challenging conditions – then you’ll probably have the right aptitude to become a foster carer.

If the answer is yes, find out more about how you can enjoy the satisfaction Shelley and I get from making that difference to the lives of those young people who desperately need a loving home.

Nicholas & Shelley foster for Blue Sky Fostering. If you would like to find out more visit www.blueskyfostering.com or call Blue Sky Fostering on 0845 6076697.