Moving on from foster care doesn’t have to mean a forever goodbye.
Foster families play a critical role in supporting children transition into a new home and maintain that relationship long into the future.
Having a support network of people that they know well, helps a child feel loved, develop a strong sense of identity, and maintain healthy relationships in the future.
rachel’s story
Rachel and her husband adopted their daughter in 2008 and still maintain a strong relationship with her foster family.
Now foster carers themselves, they feel passionately about the importance of staying connected.
“When we adopted my daughter, our daughter’s foster carer and birth sons were always really warm and friendly. They did everything they could to make it go well.
“My daughter really missed them so at the first opportunity I got in touch and asked whether we could go and see them, and they welcomed us with opened arms.
“If the boys know that we’re going round, they make an effort to finish work early.
“In the past, if they were out with friends, they’d come back. My daughter would always call them her foster brothers. And they are like brothers to her. If they see us out, they’ll always stop and chat, give her cwtches.
“They were really good to her, very encouraging of her and really accepting of her disability. They’ve always accepted her for who she is.
“We’ve decided now that they are part of our family. They are massively important to us and are very much engrained as part of our life. A massive part of our life.”
sian’s story
When Sian and her partner adopted their children, they were determined to maintain contact with their foster family.
Sian feels strongly that their relationship is hugely important to her children’s identity and life story.
“When they came to live here, my daughter was three and my son was just turning two. I think my daughter remembers more about being with her foster family.
“Our children were with their foster carers for 18 months and their foster carers had a daughter who was 18 when our children moved in. My daughter especially absolutely loved her.
“She graduated in the summer, and we had photos from her, and the children absolutely love seeing her.
“She’s really lovely with them, she plays with them in the park, gets them an ice cream. She genuinely loves seeing them.
“We still meet them once a year and we send photos all the time.
“It’s really important to keep in touch, there’s a lot of loss in adoption and those relationships are one of the things that they don’t have to lose.
“My daughter has had a lot of questions in the past about what has happened to her, and her foster family have been really helpful in answering those.
“They know the story of those early days; they lived it with our children, and they can talk to them in the future about their birth families.
“It’s all about acknowledging and recognising our children’s story. Adoption is a lifelong journey and they’re in it forever so it’s about having support to help them through the challenging and difficult bits as well as the lovely bits.
“Relationship trauma is repaired by having really positive relationships and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
want to learn more?
We believe that relationships are important.
The impact that foster families have on our children in those early days is incredible. And the children have a special place in our foster families’ hearts too, even when the children move on, remembering their first steps, their first smile.
children can never have too many people to love them
At Foster Wales, fostering can mean a day, a week, a year or longer. To find out more about short-term fostering and helping young children to move on to adoption, get in touch with your local authority fostering team.
