When did you know you were ready to foster?
Ilyas and his wife Hawa have four grown-up children and eight grandchildren. They have fostered for Bolton since 2016, starting relatively late in life. “We have relatives who foster, so it was something we understood and had talked about over the years,” says Ilyas. “We had reached a point in our lives where we wanted to give something back. We had a lot of experience with children and families, and we had room in the house.”
Ilyas says it took almost a year for them to decide to apply. “We gave it a lot of thought. We wondered about how it would fit in with our own big family and how they would all cope. We also worried about whether we could handle it. You hear stories about fostering and children in care, and how difficult it can be. But finally we got in touch with the council and applied to foster. It was the best decision.” They currently have four foster children, including two siblings who are in long-term care.
Ilyas agrees that people in later life have much to offer through fostering. “We have a lot of life experience to share and we are very settled. There isn’t much that surprises us.” Ilya and his family emphasise the importance of learning. “I had no qualifications and it limited what I could do,” he says. “I tell the children about how important it is to learn. It doesn’t matter if they have fallen behind; what matters is applying yourself to learn as much as you can now.”
"We felt it was important to have financial security..."
Michaela, 32, has been fostering with Oldham Council for four years. She and her husband had thought about fostering for some years before applying. But they had put the decision on hold, initially until they felt more secure financially and then to bring up their own young children. “We felt it was important to have financial security and to wait until our children were a little bit older.”
During this time Michaela gained significant experience of working with children as a Teaching Assistant in a local school. “I spent 12 years working with children and in day care settings. This pushed me into knowing that what I wanted to do was to give a home to children in need.”
Michaela also took time to research therapeutic parenting of children with trauma to understand what might be required in fostering. Despite her experience with children and her research, Michaela says that you are never quite as ready as you would like to be when the first children arrive. “I think it is a bit like having a baby. You hope you have everything ready but you really don’t know what to expect and how things will go.
“Every child is different and each one comes with their own set of challenges. It is case of taking each day as it comes.”
Michaela’s advice to other young parents thinking of fostering is to make sure things are as settled as possible at home and that sons and daughters are supportive. “It needs to be a family decision. You go into fostering as a team and you need to be sure that you are all in it together.”
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