The Waiting Game – New Appeal For Foster Parents (Contributed)

TIM is waiting for a new home. Aged 11, he has been with short-term foster carers for over a year. After it became clear, he could not return to live with his parents and that his Nan was too ill to care for him, the search began to find him a long term ? permanent foster home. Tim needs someone to come forward who could foster him until he can live independently. Ideally Tim will be the only or youngest child in the household. Some months have now passed since the search began but sadly no-one has come forward.

Emma has been living with foster carers for 3 months. She originally went to live with them on an emergency basis. After just a few days of going to live with her emergency foster carers, it became apparent that the problems at home would take a while to fix and that Emma would need to remain in foster care for some months. Emma has settled quite well with her current foster carers but is not happy to have been placed so far from her home. She finds this makes it difficult to see her family, and friends and she positively hates the 20-mile each way journey to school each day. She is hoping that her social worker will move her to foster carers who live nearer to home but each time her social worker visits the news is sadly the same, ?Sorry, but there is no-one available?.

Local independent fostering agency, familyplacement.com, is working to help Tim and Emma and other children like them. The agency seeks to do this by recruiting foster carers for children in or near to their home area and by encouraging people to consider fostering as an alternative to work outside of the home. As agency director, Andy Clipson says, ?Our foster carers are paid a professional fee in addition to a child maintenance allowance. This allows some people to give up work to start a new career in fostering. Proper rewards do not stop foster carers from loving the kids?. ?All of the agency?s foster carers are also provided with high level support and ongoing training to help them to develop their parenting skills to a higher level.?

If you think you might be able to help. Please call 01993 201514 or email: info@familyplacement.com