Friday 30 June 2017
Our young people’s group, named “The Young Team”, meet quarterly with our staff and embark on social outings such as trampolining, go-carting and shared lunch times. The group provides a support network for our children and young people as they can meet each other and engage in conversations about a range of topics affecting their lives. It also gives them the opportunity to get more involved with the agency and have their say on how the agency should operate.
“The Young Team” have been involved with making a recruitment DVD which is used to recruit staff and foster carers. They have also developed a unique Fostering Relations children’s website and have kindly put together a welcome box for foster children new to the agency. Included in the welcome box is a letter to the new child, talking to them about what they can expect and what it’s like to live in foster care. We thought we would share this with you…
Hello,
Welcome to Fostering Relations!
We want you to know there is nothing to worry about. Being in foster care is not scary. Some people think foster care is horrible but it isn’t –it’s awesome! Your Foster carer will keep you safe.
It is really good because you will stay with someone who will really care about you. They will try to help you to keep in touch with your family and friends if social workers allow them.
You will get birthdays and Christmases with presents and you might even get to go on holidays too. Fostering Relations have a really good caravan that you can visit with your foster carer.
Being in foster care is really good because you get to be part of a wider family too and when they get to know you, you will have a family that really love you, care for you and look after you really well. It is ok for you to love them too even if you still see your family.
You will have the chance to do activities if you want and they will help you with school stuff. Most foster carers make really nice food too- if you tell them what you like they will probably let you help choose dinners.
Fostering Relations is really good because their social workers are nice and you can talk to them if you need to. They also run a really cool group – “The Young Team”. We meet up every couple of months and go to cool places like sledging, crazy golf, laser tag, ten pin bowling and trampolining. We get to say what we think about things to do with foster care and they make changes so that things are better for us. It is also really good to meet other kids in care because you have things in common – you can talk about stuff or ask questions if you want to but you don’t have to.
We hope you come along to one of the groups soon – don’t be nervous –we are really friendly and it’s fun!!
Hope to see you soon.
Xxx