Shropshire needs foster carers

If you live in Shropshire and want to help local, vulnerable and traumatised children then please read on.

There are always families that struggle to stay together or live safely with each other for whatever reason and when this happens there is often a  need for the intervention of Social Services to help them cope.  Sometimes the help that is needed is to take a child into care, either temporarily or longer term.  When this happens one avenue of support is to place the child in a foster family.  People who foster come from a very wide range of backgrounds and circumstances.  There are married couples, unmarried couples, same sex couples, single carers (male and female), different ethnicities, families with children and others with no children.

Since March 2020, when much of the world went into lockdown, there has been an alarming increase in the number of children that need to be looked after, but there are far too few foster families to offer the support that is needed.  New Chapters Fostercare has always promoted “local carers for local children” because we are passionate in our belief that children who cannot remain with their birth family should remain in the same community, so that contact with birth family can be maintained when it is safe to do so.  This also allows the child to keep their network of friends, hopefully stay at the same school and any clubs or activities they are engaged in.

There is no question that being a foster carer is a real challenge and places a significant demand on your time, but there is also no question that the rewards and sense of achievement are immeasurable.  New Chapters is blessed with a team of foster carers that constantly go above and beyond to ensure that the children that are living with them get the best care that anyone could provide.  To make sure our foster carers can do this we provide a team of very skilled and experienced staff who are there to support and guide them.  There is support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from people who know you and the child you are looking after.

If you apply and become approved with New Chapters Fostercare you will be trained to parent therapeutically.  What this means is that you will learn how to understand and accept the behaviours that a child’s past trauma has caused them to exhibit.  You will acquire the ability to empathise with how the child is feeling, making you better placed to manage any situation more effectively and safely.  Over time the child will see that you are genuinely there for them and accept them for who they are.  Therapeutic parenting is not an instant fix but rather a drip feed approach, but our experience tells us that if used consistently it helps build trust between the carer and child.  Once trust is established so much more becomes possible.

If you are still reading this then you are probably a local person who may be interested in learning a bit more about how you can help a vulnerable and traumatised child.  If so, please read this last bit.

Becoming a foster carer is not an easy process and will require you to be prepared to have your life scrutinised during an assessment period that usually lasts about 3 – 4 months.  I don’t say this to frighten you but rather to emphasise how important it is for us to ensure we only approve the right people who are safe, passionate, resilient and prepared to help us keep our aspiration of providing “local carers for local children”.  Thank you for reading this and I hope it has inspired you to be someone who can offer a child the chance to have a new chapter in their life.