Maria and Julian
Maria and Julian from Gloucester have been fostering since 2012. They initially fostered for an agency but felt they weren’t getting the support they needed and transferred to Gloucestershire County Council in 2015.
They have fostered many children since they have been with the council, all of them teenagers. This includes emergency fostering, remand fostering, short term fostering and long term fostering. Their experience made them the perfect candidates for the council’s intensive support service. They are now both full-time foster carers.
Julian’s experience before fostering included working as a military contractor in Iraq and as a prison officer. Maria worked as an 18 to 30s holiday rep and as a theatre nurse. They said, “We’ve had a lot of jobs along the way and this has been the most interesting.”
Fostering teenagers
"When we started, we weren’t sure what age we wanted to foster but we looked after a teenage girl and got on really well with her. We discovered that we enjoyed working with teenagers and that caring for teenagers was what we wanted to do.
It takes patience and definitely a good sense of humour to foster teenagers. You need to take it gently – they are very sensitive and there are a lot of hormones!
Yes, it’s important to be laid back. It’s important to have rules but also to be laid back.
We’ve had everything thrown at us and we’ve learned a lot along the way. We haven’t had children of our own but feel that our life experience has been the key to being successful foster carers. Having seen a thing or two, you generally have more patience and understanding.
Fostering teenagers has lots of ups and downs, and you have to be good at dealing with a crisis! Nothing shocks us anymore.
A lot of people seem to be afraid of fostering teenagers but, with the right support, it’s the same as other kinds of fostering, if not easier. They are good fun and we can all learn from them.
You are caring for them but you’re also teaching them to be independent – how to wash their clothes, tidy their rooms and cook a meal – all sorts of things. We feel sometimes that we’re foster teachers rather than foster carers.
We tell them, “Just enjoy it. We’re here to help you”. We organise a bus pass for them and give them a bit of independence."
Intensive support fostering
"We’ve had really good support as part of the team. They’ve been great. Often the children aren’t currently going to school and you really need that support.
These are children who are in crisis and have moved around a lot.
You also need a strategy because with an intensive placement they are at crisis level. You need to have a strategy right at the very start. You have to be flexible and adapt, even against your own instinct sometimes. You have to rethink things and have an open mind.
Ultimately, we’re only ever looking out for the best interest of the child."